LIBRAR 

UNIVERSITY 
CALIFORNIA 
IRVINE 


I  X 


' 


91 


*^^-"-*«.* 


\ 


DANTE      GABRIEL      ROSSETTI 

FROM       A       PAINTING       BY      G.     F.     WATTS.     R.A. 


MEMORIES 
AND    IMPRESSIONS 

A    STUDY    IN    ATMOSPHERES 


BY 

FORD   MADOX   HUEFFER 


ILLUSTRATED 


HARPER  6s  BROTHERS    PUBLISHERS 

NEW    YORK    AND    LONDON 

M  C  M  X  I 


•BOTTOHT    AT 

THE    BOOK-SHBLF 
©T.  LUXES  OF5i7**rr 


COPYRIGHT.    1911.    BY    HARPER   ft    BROTHERS 


PUBLISHED   MARCH.    1911 


"A  hundred  years  went  by,  and  what  was 
left  of  his  haughty  and  proud  people  full  of 
free  passions  ?  They  and  all  their  genera- 
tions had  passed  away." 

— PUSHKIN   (Sardanapalus). 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


DEDICATION ix 

I.  THE  INNER  CIRCLE i 

II.  THE  OUTER  RING 21 

III.  GLOOM  AND  THE  POETS 38 

IV.  CHRISTINA    ROSSETTI    AND    PRE-RAPHAELITE 

LOVE 60 

V.  Music  AND  MASTERS 78 

VI.  PRE-RAPHAELITES  AND  PRISONS 106 

VII.  ANARCHISTS  AND  GRAY  FRIEZE 133 

VIII.  VARIOUS  CONSPIRATORS 161 

IX.  POETS  AND  PRESSES 175 

X.  A  LITERARY  DEITY 197 

XL      DEATHS  AND  DEPARTURES 218 

XII.  HEROES  AND  SOME  HEROINES 250 

XIII.  CHANGES 279 

XIV.  AND  AGAIN  CHANGES        300 

XV.  WHERE  WE  STAND       318 

INDEX 331 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

DANTE    GABRIEL   ROSSETTI Frontispiece 

FORD   MADOX    BROWN          Facingp.  4 

SIR  EDWARD  BURNE-JONES *'  24 

ALGERNON  CHARLES  SWINBURNE '*  28 

JAMES  M'NEILL  WHISTLER '*  32 

JOHN  RUSKIN "  64 

CHRISTINA  G.  ROSSETTI "  74 

FRANZ  LISZT "  80 

JOSEPH  JOACHIM "  IO2 

WILLIAM  MORRIS "  134 

DOUGLAS  JERROLD '*  178 

THOMAS  HARDY '*  198 

GUSTAVE  FLAUBERT "  204 

HOLMAN  HUNT "  232 

SIR  JOHN  MILLAIS "  240 

THOMAS  CARLYLE "  320 


DEDICATION 

TO   CHRISTINA   AND    KATHARINE 

"  I\A  ^  DEAR  KIDS — Accept  this  book,  the  best 
A  V  1  Christmas  present  that  I  can  give  you.  You 
will  have  received  before  this  comes  to  be  printed,  or 
at  any  rate  before — bound,  numbered,  and  presum- 
ably indexed — it  will  have  come  in  book  form  into 
your  hands — you  will  have  received  the  amber  neck- 
laces and  the  other  things  that  are  the  outward 
and  visible  sign  of  the  presence  of  Christmas.  But 
certain  other  things  underlie  all  the  presents  that  a 
father  makes  to  his  children.  Thus  there  is  the  spir- 
itual gift  of  heredity. 

"It  is  with  some  such  idea  in  my  head — with  the 
idea,  that  is  to  say,  of  analyzing  for  your  benefit  what 
my  heredity  had  to  bestow  upon  you — that  I  began  this 
book.  That,  of  course,  would  be  no  reason  for  mak- 
ing it  a  'book,'  which  is  a  thing  that  appeals  to  many 
thousands  of  people,  if  the  appeal  can  only  reach 
them.  But  to  tell  you  the  strict  truth,  I  made  for 
myself  the  somewhat  singular  discovery  that  I  can 
only  be  said  to  have  grown  up  a  very  short  time  ago — 

ix 


DEDICATION 


perhaps  three  months,  perhaps  six.  I  discovered  that 
I  had  grown  up  only  when  I  discovered  quite  sudden- 
ly that  I  was  forgetting  my  own  childhood.  My  own 
childhood  was  a  thing  so  vivid  that  it  certainly  in- 
fluenced me,  that  it  certainly  rendered  me  timid,  in- 
capable of  self-assertion,  and,  as  it  were,  perpetually 
conscious  of  original  sin,  until  only  just  the  other 
day.  For  you  ought  to  consider  that  upon  the  one 
hand  as  a  child  I  was  very  severely  disciplined,  and, 
when  I  was  not  being  severely  disciplined,  I  moved 
among  somewhat  distinguished  people  who  all  ap- 
peared to  me  to  be  morally  and  physically  twenty-five 
feet  high.  The  earliest  thing  that  I  can  remember  is 
this,  and  the  odd  thing  is  that,  as  I  remember  it,  I 
seem  to  be  looking  at  myself  from  outside.  I  see 
myself  a  very  tiny  child  in  a  long,  blue  pinafore,  look- 
ing into  the  breeding-box  of  some  Barbary  ring-doves 
that  my  grandmother  kept  in  the  window  of  the  huge 
studio  in  Fitzroy  Square.  The  window  itself  appears 
to  me  to  be  as  high  as  a  house,  and  I  myself  to  be  as 
small  as  a  doorstep,  so  that  I  stand  on  tiptoe  and  just 
manage  to  get  my  eyes  and  nose  over  the  edge  of  the 
box,  while  my  long  curls  fall  forward  and  tickle  my 
nose.  And  then  I  perceive  grayish  and  almost  shape- 
less objects  with,  upon  them,  little  speckles  like  the 
very  short  spines  of  hedgehogs,  and  I  stand  with  the 
first  surprise  of  my  life  and  with  the  first  wonder  of 
my  life.  I  ask  myself,  can  these  be  doves  —  these 
unrecognizable,  panting  morsels  of  flesh  ?  And  then, 


DEDICATION 


very  soon,  my  grandmother  comes  in  and  is  angry. 
She  tells  me  that  if  the  mother  dove  is  disturbed  she 
will  eat  her  young.  This,  I  believe,  is  quite  incor- 
rect. Nevertheless,  I  know  quite  well  that  for  many 
days  afterward  I  thought  I  had  destroyed  life,  and 
that  I  was  exceedingly  sinful.  I  never  knew  my 
grandmother  to  be  angry  again,  except  once,  when 
she  thought  I  had  broken  a  comb  which  I  had  cer- 
tainly not  broken.  I  never  knew  her  raise  her  voice; 
I  hardly  know  how  she  can  have  expressed  anger; 
she  was  by  so  far  the  most  equable  and  gentle  person 
I  have  ever  known  that  she  seemed  to  me  to  be  almost 
not  a  personality  but  just  a  natural  thing.  Yet  it  was 
my  misfortune  to  have  from  this  gentle  personality  my 
first  conviction — and  this,  my  first  conscious  convic- 
tion, was  one  of  great  sin,  of  a  deep  criminality. 
Similarly  with  my  father,  who  was  a  man  of  great 
rectitude  and  with  strong  ideas  of  discipline.  Yet  for 
a  man  of  his  date  he  must  have  been  quite  mild  in  his 
treatment  of  his  children.  In  his  bringing  up,  such 
was  the  attitude  of  parents  toward  children  that  it 
was  the  duty  of  himself  and  his  brothers  and  sisters  at 
the  end  of  each  meal  to  kneel  down  and  kiss  the  hands 
of  their  father  and  mother  as  a  token  of  thanks  for  the 
nourishment  received.  So  that  he  was,  after  his 
lights,  a  mild  and  reasonable  man  to  his  children. 
Nevertheless,  what  I  remember  of  him  most  was  that 
he  called  me  'the  patient  but  extremely  stupid  donkey/ 
And  so  I  went  through  life  until  only  just  the  other 

xi 


DEDICATION 


day  with  the  conviction  of  extreme  sinfulness  and  of 
extreme  stupidity. 

"God  knows  that  the  lesson  we  learn  from  life  is 
that  our  very  existence  in  the  nature  of  things  is 
a  perpetual  harming  of  somebody — if  only  because 
every  mouthful  of  food  that  we  eat  is  a  mouthful 
taken  from  somebody  else.  This  lesson  you  will 
have  to  learn  in  time.  But  if  I  write  this  book, 
and  if  I  give  it  to  the  world,  it  is  very  much  that 
you  may  be  spared  a  great  many  of  the  quite  un- 
necessary tortures  that  were  mine  until  I  'grew  up.' 
Knowing  you  as  I  do,  I  imagine  that  you  very  much 
resemble  myself  in  temperament,  and  so  you  may 
resemble  myself  in  moral  tortures.  And  since  I  can- 
not flatter  myself  that  either  you  or  I  are  very  ex- 
ceptional, it  is  possible  that  this  book  may  be  useful 
not  only  to  you  for  whom  I  have  written  it,  but  to 
many  other  children  in  a  world  that  is  sometimes  un- 
necessarily sad.  It  sums  up  the  impressions  that  I 
have  received  in  a  quarter  of  a  century.  For  the  rea- 
son that  I  have  given  you — for  the  reason  that  I  have 
now  discovered  myself  to  have  'grown  up  ' — it  seems 
to  me  that  it  marks  the  end  of  an  epoch,  the  closing  of 
a  door. 

"As  I  have  said,  I  find  that  my  impressions  of  the 
early  and  rather  noteworthy  persons  among  whom  my 
childhood  was  passed — that  these  impressions  are  be- 
ginning to  grow  a  little  dim.  So  I  have  tried  to  rescue 
them  now,  before  they  go  out  of  my  mind  altogether. 

xii 


DEDICATION 


And,  while  trying  to  rescue  them,  I  have  tried  to  com- 
pare them  with  my  impressions  of  the  world  as  it  is  at 
the  present  day.  As  you  will  see  when  you  get  to  the 
last  chapter  of  the  book,  I  am  perfectly  contented 
with  the  world  of  to-day.  It  is  not  the  world  of 
twenty-five  years  ago,  but  it  is  a  very  good  world.  It 
is  not  so  full  of  the  lights  of  individualities,  but  it  is  not 
so  full  of  shadow  for  the  obscure.  For  you  must  re- 
member that  I  always  considered  myself  to  be  the  most 
obscure  of  obscure  persons — a  very  small,  a  very  sinful, 
a  very  stupid  child.  And  for  such  persons  the  world  of 
twenty-five  years  ago  was  rather  a  dismal  place.  You 
see  there  were  in  those  days  a  number  of  those  terrible 
and  forbidding  things  —  the  Victorian  great  figures. 
To  me  life  was  simply  not  worth  living  because  of  the 
existence  of  Carlyle,  of  Mr.  Ruskin,  of  Mr.  Holman 
Hunt,  of  Mr.  Browning,  or  of  the  gentleman  who 
built  the  Crystal  Palace.  These  people  were  perpetu- 
ally held  up  to  me  as  standing  upon  unattainable 
heights,  and  at  the  same  time  I  was  perpetually  being 
told  that  if  I  could  not  attain  these  heights  I  might 
just  as  well  not  cumber  the  earth.  What  then  was 
left  for  me  ?  Nothing.  Simply  nothing. 

"Now,  my  dear  children — and  I  speak  not  only  to 
you,  but  to  all  who  have  never  grown  up — never  let 
yourselves  be  disheartened  or  saddened  by  such 
thoughts.  Do  not,  that  is  to  say,  desire  to  be  Ruskins 
or  Carlyles.  Do  not  desire  to  be  great  figures.  It 
will  crush  in  you  all  ambition;  it  will  render  you  timid, 

xiii 


DEDICATION 


it  will  foil  nearly  all  your  efforts.  Nowadays  we  have 
no  great  figures,  and  I  thank  Heaven  for  it,  because  you 
and  I  can  breathe  freely.  With  the  passing  the  other 
day  of  Tolstoy,  with  the  death  just  a  few  weeks  before 
of  Mr.  Holman  Hunt,  they  all  went  away  to  Olympus, 
where  very  fittingly  they  may  dwell.  And  so  you  are 
freed  from  these  burdens  which  so  heavily  and  for  so 
long  hung  upon  the  shoulders  of  one — and  of  how  many 
others  ?  For  the  heart  of  another  is  a  dark  forest,  and 
I  do  not  know  how  many  thousands  other  of  my 
fellow  men  and  women  have  been  so  oppressed.  Per- 
haps I  was  exceptionally  morbid,  perhaps  my  ideals 
were  exceptionally  high.  For  high  ideals  were  always 
being  held  before  me.  My  grandfather,  as  you  will 
read,  was  not  only  perpetually  giving;  he  was  per- 
petually enjoining  upon  all  others  the  necessity  of 
giving  never-endingly.  We  were  to  give  not  only  all 
our  goods,  but  all  our  thoughts,  all  our  endeavors;  we 
were  to  stand  aside  always  to  give  openings  for  others. 
I  do  not  know  that  I  would  ask  you  to  look  upon  life 
otherwise  or  to  adopt  another  standard  of  conduct; 
but  still  it  is  as  well  to  know  beforehand  that  such  a 
rule  of  life  will  expose  you  to  innumerable  miseries, 
to  efforts  almost  superhuman,  and  to  innumerable  be- 
trayals— or  to  transactions  in  which  you  will  consider 
yourself  to  have  been  betrayed.  I  do  not  know  that 
I  would  wish  you  to  be  spared  any  of  these  unhappi- 
nesses.  For  the  past  generosities  of  one's  life  are  the 
only  milestones  on  that  road  that  one  can  regret  leav- 

xiv 


DEDICATION 


ing  behind.  Nothing  else  matters  very  much,  since 
they  alone  are  one's  achievement.  And  remember 
this,  that  when  you  are  in  any  doubt,  standing  between 
what  may  appear  right  and  what  may  appear  wrong, 
though  you  cannot  tell  which  is  wrong  and  which  is 
right,  and  may  well  dread  the  issue — act  then  upon  the 
lines  of  your  generous  emotions,  even  though  your 
generous  emotions  may  at  the  time  appear  likely  to 
lead  you  to  disaster.  So  you  may  have  a  life  full  of 
regrets,  which  are  fitting  things  for  a  man  to  have  be- 
hind him,  but  so  you  will  have  with  you  no  causes  for 
remorse.  So  at  least  lived  your  ancestors  and  their 
friends,  and,  as  I  knew  them,  as  they  impressed  them- 
selves upon  me,  I  do  not  think  that  one  needed,  or  that 
one  needs  to-day,  better  men.  They  had  their  passions, 
their  extravagances,  their  imprudences,  their  follies. 
They  were  sometimes  unjust,  violent,  unthinking. 
But  they  were  never  cold,  they  were  never  mean. 
They  went  to  shipwreck  with  high  spirits.  I  could 
ask  nothing  better  for  you  if  I  were  inclined  to  trouble 
Providence  with  petitions. 

"F.  M.  H. 

"P.  S. — Just  a  word  to  make  plain  the  actual  na- 
ture of  this  book:  It  consists  of  impressions.  When 
some  parts  of  it  appeared  in  serial  form,  a  distinguished 
critic  fell  foul  of  one  of  the  stories  that  I  told.  My 
impression  was  and  remains  that  I  heard  Thomas 
Carlyle  tell  how  at  Weimar  he  borrowed  an  apron 

xv 


DEDICATION 


from  a  waiter  and  served  tea  to  Goethe  and  Schiller, 
who  were  sitting  in  eighteenth-century  court  dress  be- 
neath a  tree.  The  distinguished  critic  of  a  distin- 
guished paper  commented  upon  this  story,  saying  that 
Carlyle  never  was  in  Weimar,  and  that  Schiller  died 
when  Carlyle  was  aged  five.  I  did  not  write  to  this 
distinguished  critic,  because  I  do  not  like  writing  to  the 
papers,  but  I  did  write  to  a  third  party.  I  said  that  a 
few  days  before  that  date  I  had  been  talking  to  a  Hes- 
sian peasant,  a  veteran  of  the  war  of  1870.  He  had 
fought  at  Sedan,  at  Gravelotte,  before  Paris,  and  had 
been  one  of  the  troops  that  marched  under  the  Arc  de 
Triomphe.  In  1910  I  asked  this  veteran  of  1870  what 
the  war  had  been  all  about.  He  said  that  the  Em- 
peror of  Germany,  having  heard  that  the  Emperor 
Napoleon  had  invaded  England  and  taken  his  mother- 
in-law,  Queen  Victoria,  prisoner — that  the  Emperor  of 
Germany  had  marched  into  France  to  rescue  his  dis- 
tinguished connection.  In  my  letter  to  my  critic's 
friend  I  said  that  if  I  had  related  this  anecdote  I  should 
not  have  considered  it  as  a  contribution  to  history,  but 
as  material  illustrating  the  state  of  mind  of  a  Hessian 
peasant.  So  with  my  anecdote  about  Carlyle.  It  was 
intended  to  show  the  state  of  mind  of  a  child  of  seven 
brought  into  contact  with  a  Victorian  great  figure. 
When  I  wrote  the  anecdote  I  was  perfectly  aware  that 
Carlyle  never  was  in  Weimar  while  Schiller  was  alive, 
or  that  Schiller  and  Goethe  would  not  be  likely  to 
drink  tea,  and  that  they  would  not  have  worn  eigh- 

xvi 


DEDICATION 


teenth-century  court  dress  at  any  time  when  Carlyle 
was  alive.  But  as  a  boy  I  had  that  pretty  and  roman- 
tic impression,  and  so  I  presented  it  to  the  world — 
for  what  it  was  worth.  So  much  I  communicated  to 
the  distinguished  critic  in  question.  He  was  kind 
enough  to  reply  to  my  friend,  the  third  party,  that, 
whatever  I  might  say,  he  was  right  and  I  was  wrong. 
Carlyle  was  only  five  when  Schiller  died,  and  so  on. 
He  proceeded  to  comment  upon  my  anecdote  of  the 
Hessian  peasant  to  this  effect :  At  the  time  of  the 
Franco-Prussian  War  there  was  no  emperor  of  Ger- 
many; the  Emperor  Napoleon  never  invaded  England; 
he  never  took  Victoria  prisoner,  and  so  on.  He 
omitted  to  mention  that  there  never  was  and  never  will 
be  a  modern  emperor  of  Germany. 

"I  suppose  that  this  gentleman  was  doing  what  is 
called  *  pulling  my  leg/  for  it  is  impossible  to  imagine 
that  any  one,  even  an  English  literary  critic  or  a  Ger- 
man professor  or  a  mixture  of  the  two,  could  be  so 
wanting  in  a  sense  of  humor — or  in  any  sense  at  all. 
But  there  the  matter  is,  and  this  book  is  a  book  of  im- 
pressions. My  impression  is  that  there  have  been  six 
thousand  four  hundred  and  seventy-two  books  written 
to  give  the  facts  about  the  Pre-Raphaelite  movement. 
My  impression  is  that  I  myself  have  written  more  than 
seventeen  million  wearisome  and  dull  words  as  to  the 
facts  about  the  Pre-Raphaelite  movement.  These, 
you  understand,  are  my  impressions;  probably  there 
are  not  more  than  ninety  books  dealing  with  the  sub- 

xvii 


DEDICATION 


ject,  and  I  have  not  myself  really  written  more  than 
three  hundred  and  sixty  thousand  words  on  these 
matters.  But  what  I  am  trying  to  get  at  is  that,  though 
there  have  been  many  things  written  about  these  facts, 
no  one  has  whole-heartedly  and  thoroughly  attempted 
to  get  the  atmosphere  of  these  twenty-five  years. 
This  book,  in  short,  is  full  of  inaccuracies  as  to  facts, 
but  its  accuracy  as  to  impressions  is  absolute.  For 
the  facts,  when  you  have  a  little  time  to  waste,  I  should 
suggest  that  you  go  through  this  book,  carefully  noting 
the  errors.  To  the  one  of  you  who  succeeds  in  finding 
the  largest  number  I  will  cheerfully  present  a  copy  of 
the  ninth  edition  of  the  Encyclopaedia  Britannica,  so 
that  you  may  still  further  perfect  yourself  in  the  hunt- 
ing out  of  errors.  But  if  one  of  you  can  discover  in  it 
any  single  impression  that  can  be  demonstrably  proved 
not  sincere  on  my  part  I  will  draw  you  a  check  for 
whatever  happens  to  be  my  balance  at  the  bank  for  the 
next  ten  succeeding  years.  This  is  a  handsome  offer, 
but  I  can  afford  to  make  it,  for  you  will  not  gain  a  single 
penny  in  the  transaction.  My  business  in  life,  in 
short,  is  to  attempt  to  discover  and  to  try  to  let  you 
see  where  we  stand.  I  don't  really  deal  in  facts;  I 
have  for  facts  a  most  profound  contempt.  I  try  to 
give  you  what  I  see  to  be  the  spirit  of  an  age,  of  a  town, 
of  a  movement.  This  cannot  be  done  with  facts. 
Supposing  that  I  am  walking  beside  a  cornfield  and 
I  hear  a  great  rustling,  and  a  hare  jumps  out.  Sup- 
posing now  that  I  am  the  owner  of  that  field  and  I  go 

xvi  i 


DEDICATION 


to  my  farm  bailiff  and  should  say:  'There  are  about  a 
million  hares  in  that  field.  I  wish  you  would  keep  the 
damned  beasts  down/  There  would  not  have  been  a 
million  hares  in  the  field,  and  hares  being  soulless 
beasts  cannot  be  damned,  but  I  should  have  produced 
upon  that  bailiff  the  impression  that  I  desired.  So  in 
this  book.  It  is  not  always  foggy  in  Bloomsbury; 
indeed,  I  happen  to  be  writing  in  Bloomsbury  at  this 
moment  and,  though  it  is  just  before  Christmas,  the 
light  of  day  is  quite  tolerable.  Nevertheless,  with  an 
effrontery  that  will,  I  am  sure,  appal  the  critic  of  my 
Hessian  peasant  story,  I  say  that  the  Pre-Raphaelite 
poets  carried  on  their  work  amid  the  glooms  of 
Bloomsbury,  and  this  I  think  is  a  true  impression. 
To  say  that  on  an  average  in  the  last  twenty-five  years 
there  have  been  in  Bloomsbury  per  three  hundred  and 
sixty-five  days,  ten  of  bright  sunshine,  two  hundred 
and  ninety-nine  of  rain,  forty-two  of  fog,  and  the  re- 
mainder compounded  of  all  three,  would  not  seriously 
help  the  impression.  This  fact  I  think  you  will  un- 
derstand, though  I  doubt  whether  my  friend  the  critic 
will.  F.  M.  H. 

"P.  P.  S. — I  find  that  I  have  written  these  words 
not  in  Bloomsbury,  but  in  the  electoral  district  of 
East  St.  Pancras.  Perhaps  it  is  gloomier  in  Blooms- 
bury.  I  will  go  and  see. 

"P.  P.P.  S.— It  is." 


MEMORIES  AND  IMPRESSIONS 


MEMORIES   AND    IMPRESSIONS 


THE    INNER   CIRCLE 

SAYS  Thackeray: 
"On  his  way  to  the  city,  Mr.  Newcome  rode 
to  look  at  the  new  house,  No.  120  Fitzroy  Square, 
which  his  brother,  the  Colonel,  had  taken  in  conjunc- 
tion with  that  Indian  friend  of  his,  Mr.  Binnie.  .  .  . 
The  house  is  vast  but,  it  must  be  owned,  melancholy. 
Not  long  since  it  was  a  ladies'  school,  in  an  unpros- 
perous  condition.  The  scar  left  by  Madame  Latour's 
brass  plate  may  still  be  seen  on  the  tall  black  door, 
cheerfully  ornamented,  in  the  style  of  the  end  of  the 
last  century,  with  a  funereal  urn  in  the  centre  of  the 
entry,  and  garlands  and  the  skulls  of  rams  at  each 
corner.  .  .  .  The  kitchens  were  gloomy.  The  stables 
were  gloomy.  Great  black  passages;  cracked  con- 
servatory; dilapidated  bath-room,  with  melancholy 
waters  moaning  and  fizzing  from  the  cistern;  the  great 
large  blank  stone  staircase — were  all  so  many  melan- 
choly features  in  the  general  countenance  of  the  house; 

i 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

but  the  Colonel  thought  it  perfectly  cheerful  and 
pleasant,  and  furnished  it  in  his  rough-and-ready 
way." — The  Newcomes. 

And  it  was  in  this  house  of  Colonel  Newcome's  that 
my  eyes  first  opened,  if  not  to  the  light  of  day,  at  least 
to  any  visual  impression  that  has  not  since  been 
effaced.  I  can  remember  vividly,  as  a  very  small  boy, 
shuddering,  as  I  stood  upon  the  doorstep,  at  the 
thought  that  the  great  stone  urn,  lichened,  soot- 
stained,  and  decorated  with  a  great  ram's  head  by 
way  of  handle,  elevated  only  by  what  looked  like  a 
square  piece  of  stone  of  about  the  size  and  shape  of  a 
folio-book,  might  fall  upon  me  and  crush  me  entirely 
out  of  existence.  Such  a  possible  happening,  I  re- 
member, was  a  frequent  subject  of  discussion  among 
Madox  Brown's  friends. 

Ford  Madox  Brown,  the  painter  of  the  pictures 
called  "Work"  and  "The  Last  of  England,"  and  the 
first  painter  in  England,  if  not  in  the  world,  to  attempt 
to  render  light  exactly  as  it  appeared  to  him,  was  at 
that  time  at  the  height  of  his  powers,  of  his  reputation, 
and  of  such  prosperity  as  he  enjoyed.  His  income  from 
his  pictures  was  considerable,  and  since  he  was  an  ex- 
cellent talker,  an  admirable  host,  extraordinarily  and, 
indeed,  unreasonably  open-handed,  the  great,  formal, 
and  rather  gloomy  house  had  become  a  meeting-place 
for  almost  all  the  intellectually  unconventional  of  that 
time.  Between  1870  and  1880  the  real  Pre-Raphaelite 
movement  was  long  since  at  an  end;  the  ^Esthetic 

2 


THE    INNER    CIRCLE 


movement,  which  also  was  nicknamed  Pre-Raphaelite, 
was,  however,  coming  into  prominence,  and  at  the  very 
heart  of  this  movement  was  Madox  Brown.  As  I  re- 
member him,  with  a  square  white  beard,  with  a  ruddy 
complexion,  and  with  thick  white  hair  parted  in  the 
middle  and  falling  to  above  the  tops  of  his  ears,  Madox 
Brown  exactly  resembled  the  king  of  hearts  in  a  pack 
of  cards.  In  passion  and  in  emotions — more  par- 
ticularly during  one  of  his  fits  of  gout — he  was  a  hard- 
swearing,  old-fashioned  Tory;  his  reasoning,  however, 
and  circumstances  made  him  a  revolutionary  of  the 
romantic  type.  I  am  not  sure,  even,  that  toward  his 
later  years  he  would  not  have  called  himself  an  anar- 
chist, and  have  damned  your  eyes  if  you  had  faintly 
doubted  this  obviously  extravagant  assertion.  But  he 
loved  the  picturesque,  as  nearly  all  his  friends  loved  it. 
About  the  inner  circle  of  those  who  fathered  and 
sponsored  the  Esthetic  movement  there  was  abso- 
lutely nothing  of  the  languishing.  They  were  to  a 
man  rather  burly,  passionate  creatures,  extraordi- 
narily enthusiastic,  extraordinarily  romantic,  and  most 
impressively  quarrelsome.  Neither  about  Rossetti  nor 
about  Burne-Jones,  neither  about  William  Morris  nor 
P.  P.  Marshall — and  these  were  the  principal  upholders 
of  the  firm  of  Morris  &  Company,  which  gave  aestheti- 
cism  to  the  western  world — was  there  any  inclination 
to  live  upon  the  smell  of  the  lily.  It  was  the  outer  ring, 
the  disciples,  who  developed  this  laudable  ambition 
for  poetic  pallor,  for  clinging  garments,  and  for  ascetic 

3 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

countenances.  And  it  was,  I  believe,  Mr.  Oscar  Wilde 
who  first  formulated  this  poetically  vegetarian  theory 
of  life  in  Madox  Brown's  studio  at  Fitzroy  Square. 
No,  there  was  little  of  the  smell  of  the  lily  about  the 
leaders  of  this  movement.  Thus  it  was  one  of  Madox 
Brown's  most  pleasing  anecdotes — at  any  rate,  it  was 
one  that  he  related  with  the  utmost  gusto — how 
William  Morris  came  out  onto  the  landing  in  the  house 
of  the  "Firm"  in  Red  Lion  Square  and  roared  down- 
stairs: 

"Mary,  those  six  eggs  were  bad.  I've  eaten  them, 
but  don't  let  it  occur  again." 

Morris,  also,  was  in  the  habit  of  lunching  daily  off 
roast  beef  and  plum  pudding,  no  matter  at  what  season 
of  the  year,  and  he  liked  his  puddings  large.  So  that, 
similarly,  upon  the  landing  one  day  he  shouted  : 

"Mary,  do  you  call  that  a  pudding?" 

He  was  holding  upon  the  end  of  a  fork  a  plum 
pudding  about  the  size  of  an  ordinary  breakfast  cup, 
and  having  added  some  appropriate  objurgations,  he 
hurled  the  edible  down-stairs  onto  Red-Lion  Mary's 
forehead.  This  anecdote  should  not  be  taken  to 
evidence  settled  brutality  on  the  part  of  the  poet- 
craftsman.  Red-Lion  Mary  was  one  of  the  loyalest 
supporters  of  the  "Firm"  to  the  end  of  her  days.  No, 
it  was  just  in  the  full-blooded  note  of  the  circle.  They 
liked  to  swear,  and,  what  is  more,  they  liked  to  hear 
each  other  swear.  Thus  another  of  Madox  Brown's 
anecdotes  went  to  show  how  he  kept  Morris  sitting 

4 


FORD       MADOX       BROWN 


THE    INNER    CIRCLE 


monumentally  still,  under  the  pretence  that  he  was 
drawing  his  portrait,  while  Mr.  Arthur  Hughes  tied 
his  long  hair  into  knots  for  the  purpose  of  enjoying  the 
explosion  that  was  sure  to  come  when  the  released 
Topsy — Morris  was  always  Topsy  to  his  friends — ran 
his  hands  through  his  hair.  This  anecdote  always 
seemed  to  me  to  make  considerable  calls  upon  one's 
faith.  Nevertheless,  it  was  one  that  Madox  Brown 
used  most  frequently  to  relate,  so  that  no  doubt  some- 
thing of  the  sort  must  have  occurred. 

No,  the  note  of  these  aesthetes  was  in  no  sense  as- 
cetic. What  they  wanted  in  life  was  room  to  expand 
and  to  be  at  ease.  Thus  I  remember,  in  a  sort  of 
golden  vision,  Rossetti  lying  upon  a  sofa  in  the  back 
studio  with  lighted  candles  at  his  feet  and  lighted 
candles  at  his  head,  while  two  extremely  beautiful 
ladies  dropped  grapes  into  his  mouth.  But  Rossetti 
did  this  not  because  he  desired  to  present  the  beholder 
with  a  beautiful  vision,  but  because  he  liked  lying  on 
sofas,  he  liked  grapes,  and  he  particularly  liked  beau- 
tiful ladies.  They  desired,  in  fact,  all  of  them,  room 
to  expand.  And  when  they  could  not  expand  in  any 
other  directions  they  expanded  enormously  into  their 
letters.  And — I  don't  know  why — they  mostly  ad- 
dressed their  letters  abusing  each  other  to  Madox 
Brown.  There  would  come  one  short,  sharp  note, 
and  then  answers  occupying  reams  of  note-paper. 
Thus  one  great  painter  would  write: 

"Dear  Brown — Tell  Gabriel  that  if  he  takes  my 

5 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

model  Fanny  up  the  river  on  Sunday  I  will  never 
speak  to  him  again." 

Gabriel  would  take  the  model  Fanny  up  the  river 
on  Sunday,  and  a  triangular  duel  of  portentous  letters 
would  ensue. 

Or  again,  Swinburne  would  write: 

"Dear  Brown — If  P.  says  that  I  said  that  Gabriel 
was  in  the  habit  of ,  P.  lies." 

The  accusation  against  Rossetti  being  a  Gargan- 
tuan impossibility  which  Swinburne,  surely  the  most 
loyal  of  friends,  could  impossibly  have  made,  there 
ensued  a  Gargantuan  correspondence.  Brown  writes 
to  P.  how,  when,  and  why  the  accusation  was  made; 
he  explains  how  he  went  round  to  Jones,  who  had 
nothing  to  do  with  the  matter,  and  found  that  Jones 
had  eaten  practically  nothing  for  the  last  fortnight,  and 
how  between  them  they  had  decided  that  the  best 
thing  that  they  could  do  would  be  to  go  and  tell 
Rossetti  all  about  it,  and  of  how  Rossetti  had  had  a 
painful  interview  with  Swinburne,  and  how  unhappy 
everybody  was.  P.  replies  to  Brown  that  he  had 
never  uttered  any  such  words  upon  any  such  occasion; 
that  upon  that  occasion  he  was  not  present,  having 
gone  round  to  Ruskin,  who  had  the  toothache,  and 
who  read  him  the  first  hundred  and  twenty  pages  of 
Stones  of  Venice ;  that  he  could  not  possibly  have 
said  anything  of  the  sort  about  Gabriel,  since  he  knew 
nothing  whatever  of  Gabriel's  daily  habits,  having  re- 
fused to  speak  to  him  for  the  last  nine  months  because 

6 


THE    INNER    CIRCLE 


of  Gabriel's  intolerable  habit  of  backbiting,  which  he 
was  sure  would  lead  them  all  to  destruction,  and  so 
deemed  it  prudent  not  to  go  near  him.  Gabriel  him- 
self then  enters  the  fray,  saying  that  he  has  discovered 
that  it  is  not  P.  at  all  who  made  the  accusation,  but 
Q.,  and  that  the  accusation  was  made  not  against  him, 
but  about  O.  X.,  the  Academician.  If,  however,  he, 
P.,  accuses  him,  Gabriel,  of  backbiting,  P.  must  be 
perfectly  aware  that  this  is  not  the  case,  he,  Gabriel, 
having  only  said  a  few  words  against  P/s  wife's  mother, 
who  is  a  damned  old  cat.  And  so  the  correspondence 
continues,  Jones  and  Swinburne  and  Marshall  and 
William  Rossetti  and  Charles  Augustus  Howell  and  a 
great  many  more  joining  in  the  fray,  until  at  last  every- 
body withdraws  all  the  charges,  six  months  having 
passed,  and  Brown  invites  all  the  contestants  to  dinner, 
Gabriel  intending  to  bring  old  Plint,  the  picture- 
buyer,  and  to  make  him,  when  he  has  had  plenty  of 
wine,  buy  P/s  picture  of  the  "Lost  Shepherd"  for  two 
thousand  pounds. 

These  tremendous  quarrels,  in  fact,  were  all  storms 
in  tea-cups,  and  although  the  break-up  of  the  "Firm" 
did  cause  a  comparatively  lasting  estrangement  be- 
tween several  of  the  partners,  it  has  always  pleased  me 
to  remember  that  at  the  last  private  view  that  Madox 
Brown  held  of  one  of  his  pictures  every  one  of  the 
surviving  Pre-Raphaelite  brothers  came  to  his  studio, 
and  every  one  of  the  surviving  partners  of  the  original 
firm  of  Morris  &  Company. 

7 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

The  arrival  of  Sir  Edward  Burne- Jones  and  his 
wife  brought  up  a  characteristic  passion  of  Madox 
Brown's.  Sir  Edward  had  persuaded  the  president 
of  the  Royal  Academy  to  accompany  them  in  their 
visit.  They  were  actuated  by  the  kindly  desire  to  give 
Madox  Brown  the  idea  that  thus  at  the  end  of  his  life 
the  Royal  Academy  wished  to  extend  some  sort  of 
official  recognition  to  a  painter  who  had  persistently 
refused  for  nearly  half  a  century  to  recognize  their 
existence.  Unfortunately  it  was  an  autumn  day  and 
the  twilight  had  set  in  very  early.  Thus  not  only  were 
the  distinguished  visitors  rather  shadowy  in  the  dusk, 
but  the  enormous  picture  itself  was  entirely  indis- 
tinguishable. Lady  Burne- Jones,  with  her  peculiarly 
persuasive  charm,  whispered  to  me,  unheard  by  Madox 
Brown,  that  I  should  light  the  studio  gas,  and  I  was 
striking  a  match  when  I  was  appalled  to  hear  Madox 
Brown  shout,  in  tones  of  extreme  violence  and  of  ap- 
parent alarm: 

"  Damn  and  blast  it  all,  Fordie !  Do  you  want  us  all 
blown  into  the  next  world  ?" 

And  he  proceeded  to  explain  to  Lady  Burne- Jones 
that  there  was  an  escape  of  gas  from  a  pipe.  When 
she  suggested  candles  or  a  paraffin  lamp,  Madox 
Brown  declared  with  equal  violence  that  he  couldn't 
think  how  she  could  imagine  that  he  could  have  such 
infernally  dangerous  things  in  the  house.  The  inter- 
view thus  concluded  in  a  gloom  of  the  most  tenebrous, 
and  shortly  afterward  he  went  down-stairs,  where,  in 

8 


THE    INNER    CIRCLE 


the  golden  glow  of  a  great  many  candles  set  against  a 
golden  and  embossed  wall-paper,  tea  was  being  served. 
The  fact  was  that  Madox  Brown  was  determined  that 
no  "damned  academician"  should  see  his  picture. 
Nevertheless,  it  is  satisfactory  to  me  to  think  that 
there  was  among  these  distinguished  and  kindly  men 
still  so  great  a  feeling  of  solidarity.  They  had  come, 
many  of  them,  from  great  distances,  to  do  honor,  or 
at  least  to  be  kind,  to  an  old  painter  who  at  that  time 
was  more  entirely  forgotten  than  he  has  ever  been 
before  or  since. 

The  lily  tradition  of  the  disciples  of  these  men  is,  I 
should  imagine,  almost  entirely  extinguished.  But 
the  other  day,  at  a  particularly  smart  wedding,  there 
turned  up  one  stanch  survivor  in  garments  of  prismatic 
hues — a  mustard-colored  ulster,  a  green  wide-awake, 
a  blue  shirt,  a  purple  tie,  and  a  suit  of  tweed.  This 
gentleman  moved  distractedly  among  groups  of  cor- 
rectly attired  people.  In  one  hand  he  bore  an  ex- 
tremely minute  painting  by  himself.  It  was,  perhaps, 
of  the  size  of  a  visiting-card,  set  in  an  ocean  of  white 
mount.  In  the  other  he  bore  an  enormous  spray  of 
Madonna  lilies.  That,  I  presume,  was  why  he  had 
failed  to  remove  his  green  hat.  He  was  approached  by 
the  hostess  and  he  told  her  that  he  wished  to  place  the 
picture,  his  wedding  gift,  in  the  most  appropriate  posi- 
tion that  could  be  found  for  it.  And  upon  her  sug- 
gesting that  she  would  attend  to  the  hanging  after  the 
ceremony  was  over,  he  brushed  her  aside.  Finally  he 

9 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

placed  the  picture  upon  the  ground  beneath  a  tall 
window,  and  perched  the  spray  of  lilies  on  top  of  the 
frame.  He  then  stood  back  and,  waving  his  ema- 
ciated hands  and  stroking  his  brown  beard,  surveyed 
the  effect  of  his  decoration.  The  painting,  he  said, 
symbolized  the  consolation  that  the  arts  would  afford 
the  young  couple  during  their  married  life,  and  the 
lily  stood  for  the  purity  of  the  bride.  This  is  how  in 
the  seventies  and  the  eighties  the  outer  ring  of  the 
aesthetes  really  behaved.  It  was  as  much  in  their  note 
as  were  the  plum  pudding  and  the  roast  beef  in  Will- 
iam Morris's.  The  reason  for  this  is  not  very  far  to 
seek.  The  older  men,  the  Pre-Raphaelites,  and  the 
members  of  the  "Firm"  had  too  rough  work  to  do  to 
bother  much  about  the  trimmings. 

It  is  a  little  difficult  nowadays  to  imagine  the 
acridity  with  which  any  new  artistic  movement  was 
opposed  when  Victoria  was  Queen  of  England. 
Charles  Dickens,  as  I  have  elsewhere  pointed  out, 
called  loudly  for  the  immediate  imprisonment  of 
Millais  and  the  other  Pre-Raphaelites,  including  my 
grandfather,  who  was  not  a  Pre-Raphaelite.  Blas- 
phemy was  the  charge  alleged  against  them,  just  as  it 
was  the  charge  alleged  against  the  earliest  upholders 
of  Wagner's  music  in  England.  This  may  seem  in- 
credible, but  I  have  in  my  possession  three  letters  from 
three  different  members  of  the  public  addressed  to  my 
father,  Dr.  Francis  Hueffer,  a  man  of  great  erudition 
and  force  of  character,  who,  from  the  early  seventies 

10 


THE    INNER    CIRCLE 


until  his  death,  was  the  musical  critic  of  the  Times. 
The  writers  stated  that  unless  Doctor  Hueffer  ab- 
stained from  upholding  the  blasphemous  music  of  the 
future — and  in  each  case  the  writer  used  the  word 
blasphemous — he  would  be  respectively  stabbed, 
ducked  in  a  horse-pond,  and  beaten  to  death  by  hired 
roughs.  Yet  to-day  I  never  go  to  a  place  of  popular 
entertainment  where  miscellaneous  music  is  per- 
formed for  the  benefit  of  the  poorest  classes  without 
hearing  at  least  the  overture  to  "Tannhauser." 
Nowadays  it  is  difficult  to  discern  any  new  movement 
in  any  of  the  arts.  No  doubt  there  is  movement,  no 
doubt  we  who  write  and  our  friends  who  paint  and 
compose  are  producing  the  arts  of  the  future.  But 
we  never  have  the  luck  to  have  the  word  "blasphe- 
mous" hurled  at  us.  It  would,  indeed,  be  almost  in- 
conceivable that  such  a  thing  could  happen,  that  the 
frame  of  mind  should  be  reconstructed.  But  to  the 
Pre-Raphaelites  this  word  was  blessed  in  the  extreme. 
For  human  nature  is  such — perhaps  on  account  of 
obstinacy  or  perhaps  on  account  of  feelings  of  justice 
— that  to  persecute  an  art,  as  to  persecute  a  religion,  is 
simply  to  render  its  practitioners  the  more  stubborn 
and  its  advocates  in  their  fewness  the  more  united, 
and  the  more  effective  in  their  union.  It  was  the  in- 
justice of  the  attack  upon  the  Pre-Raphaelites,  it  was 
the  fury  and  outcry,  that  won  for  them  the  attention 
of  Mr.  Ruskin.  And  Mr.  Ruskin's  attention  being 
aroused,  he  entered  on  that  splendid  and  efficient 
2  ii 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

championing  of  their  cause  which  at  last  established 
them  in  a  position  of  perhaps  more  immediate  im- 
portance than,  as  painters,  they  exactly  merited.  As 
pioneers  and  as  sufferers  they  can  never  sufficiently 
be  recommended.  Mr.  Ruskin,  for  some  cause  which 
my  grandfather  was  used  to  declare  was  purely  per- 
sonal, was  the  only  man  intimately  connected  with 
these  movements  who  had  no  connection  at  all  with 
Madox  Brown.  I  do  not  know  why  this  was,  but 
it  is  a  fact  that,  although  Madox  Brown's  pictures 
were  in  considerable  evidence  at  all  places  where 
the  pictures  of  the  Pre-Raphaelites  were  exhibited, 
Mr.  Ruskin  in  all  his  works  never  once  mentioned 
his  name.  He  never  blamed  him;  he  never  praised 
him;  he  ignored  him.  And  this  was  at  a  time  when 
Ruskin  must  have  known  that  a  word  from  him  was 
sufficient  to  make  the  fortune  of  any  painter.  It 
was  sufficient  not  so  much  because  of  Mr.  Ruskin's 
weight  with  the  general  public  as  because  the  small 
circle  of  buyers,  wealthy  and  assiduous,  who  sur- 
rounded the  painters  of  the  moment,  hung  upon  Mr. 
Ruskin's  lips  and  needed  at  least  his  printed  sanction 
for  all  their  purchases. 

Madox  Brown  was  the  most  benevolent  of  men,  the 
most  helpful  and  the  kindest.  His  manifestations, 
however,  were  apt  at  times  to  be  a  little  thorny. 
I  remember  an  anecdote  which  Madox  Brown's 
housemaid  of  that  day  was  in  the  habit  of  re- 
lating to  me  when  she  used  to  put  me  to  bed. 

12 


THE    INNER    CIRCLE 


Said  she  —  and  the  exact  words  remain  upon  my 
mind: 

"I  was  down  in  the  kitchen  waiting  to  carry  up  the 
meat,  when  a  cabman  comes  down  the  area  steps  and 
says:  'I've  got  your  master  in  my  cab.  He's  very 
drunk/  I  says  to  him" — and  an  immense  intonation 
of  pride  would  come  into  Charlotte's  voice  —  'My 
master's  a-sitting  at  the  head  of  his  table  entertaining 

his  guests.  That's  Mr.  .  Carry  him  up-stairs 

and  lay  him  in  the  bath."1 

Madox  Brown,  whose  laudable  desire  it  was  at  many 
stages  of  his  career  to  redeem  poets  and  others  from 
dipsomania,  was  in  the  habit  of  providing  several  of 
them  with  labels  upon  which  were  inscribed  his  own 
name  and  address.  Thus,  when  any  of  these  geniuses 
were  found  incapable  in  the  neighborhood  they  would 
be  brought  by  cabmen  or  others  to  Fitzroy  Square. 
This,  I  think,  was  a  stratagem  more  characteristic  of 
Madox  Brown's  singular  and  quaint  ingenuity  than 
any  that  I  can  recall.  The  poet  being  thus  recaptured 
would  be  carried  up-stairs  by  Charlotte  and  the  cab- 
man and  laid  in  the  bath — in  Colonel  Newcome's  very 
bath-room,  where,  according  to  Thackeray,  the  water 
moaned  and  gurgled  so  mournfully  in  the  cistern. 
For  me,  I  can  only  remember  that  room  as  an  apart- 
ment of  warmth  and  lightness;  it  was  a  concomitant  to 
all  the  pleasures  that  sleeping  at  my  grandfather's 
meant  for  me.  And  indeed,  to  Madox  Brown  as  to 
Colonel  Newcome — they  were  very  similar  natures  in 

13 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

their  chivalrous,  unbusinesslike,  and  naive  simplicity 
— the  house  in  Fitzroy  Square  seemed  perfectly  pleas- 
ant and  cheerful. 

The  poet  having  been  put  into  the  bath  would  be 
reduced  to  sobriety  by  cups  of  the  strongest  coffee  that 
could  be  made  (the  bath  was  selected  because  he  would 
not  be  able  to  roll  out  and  to  injure  himself).  And 
having  been  thus  reduced  to  sobriety,  he  would  be  lec- 
tured, and  he  would  be  kept  in  the  house,  being  given 
nothing  stronger  than  lemonade  to  drink,  until  he 
found  the  regime  intolerable.  Then  he  would  dis- 
appear, the  label  sewn  inside  his  coat  collar,  to  re- 
appear once  more  in  the  charge  of  a  cabman. 

Of  Madox  Brown's  acerbity  I  witnessed  myself  no 
instances  at  all,  unless  it  be  the  one  that  I  have  lately 
narrated.  A  possibly  too-stern  father  of  the  old  school, 
he  was  as  a  grandfather  extravagantly  indulgent.  I 
remember  his  once  going  through  the  catalogue  of  his 
grandchildren  and  deciding,  after  careful  delibera- 
tion, that  they  were  all  geniuses  with  the  exception  of 
one,  as  to  whom  he  could  not  be  certain  whether  he 
was  a  genius  or  mad.  Thus  I  read  with  astonish- 
ment the  words  of  a  critic  of  distinction  with  re- 
gard to  the  exhibition  of  Madox  Brown's  works  that  I 
organized  at  the  Grafton  Gallery  ten  years  ago.  They 
were  to  the  effect  that  Madox  Brown's  pictures  were 
very  crabbed  and  ugly — but  what  was  to  be  expected 
of  a  man  whose  disposition  was  so  harsh  and  distorted  ? 
This  seemed  to  me  to  be  an  amazing  statement.  But 


THE    INNER    CIRCLE 


upon  discovering  the  critic's  name  I  found  that  Madox 
Brown  once  kicked  him  down-stairs.  The  gentleman 
in  question  had  come  to  Madox  Brown  with  the  pro- 
posal from  an  eminent  firm  of  picture  dealers  that  the 
painter  should  sell  all  his  works  to  them  for  a  given 
number  of  years  at  a  very  low  price.  In  return  they 
were  to  do  what  would  be  called  nowadays  "booming" 
him,  and  they  would  do  their  best  to  get  him  elected 
an  associate  of  the  Royal  Academy.  That  Madox 
Brown  should  have  received  with  such  violence  a  prop- 
osition that  seemed  to  the  critic  so  eminently  advanta- 
geous for  all  parties,  justified  that  gentleman  in  his 
own  mind  in  declaring  that  Madox  Brown  had  a  dis- 
torted temperament.  Perhaps  he  had. 

But  if  he  had  a  rough  husk  he  had  a  sweet  kernel, 
and  for  this  reason  the  gloomy  house  in  Fitzroy  Square 
did  not,  I  thmk,  remain  as  a  shape  of  gloom  in  the 
minds  of  many  people.  It  was  very  tall,  very  large, 
very  gray,  and  in  front  of  it  towered  up  very  high  the 
mournful  plane-trees  of  the  square.  And  over  the 
porch  was  the  funereal  urn  with  the  ram's  head. 
This  object,  dangerous  and  threatening,  has  always 
seemed  to  me  to  be  symbolical  of  this  circle  of  men, 
so  practical  in  their  work  and  so  romantically  un- 
practical, as  a  whole,  in  their  lives.  They  knew 
exactly  how,  according  to  their  lights,  to  paint  pict- 
ures, to  write  poems,  to  make  tables,  to  decorate  pianos, 
rooms,  or  churches.  But  as  to  the  conduct  of  life  they 
were  a  little  sketchy,  a  little  romantic,  perhaps  a  little 

15 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

careless.  I  should  say  that  of  them  all  Madox  Brown 
was  the  most  practical.  But  his  way  of  being  prac- 
tical was  always  to  be  quaintly  ingenious.  Thus  we 
had  the  urn.  Most  of  the  Pre-Raphaelites  dreaded  it; 
they  all  of  them  talked  about  it  as  a  possible  danger, 
but  never  was  any  step  taken  for  its  removal.  It  was 
never  even  really  settled  in  their  minds  whose  would 
be  the  responsibility  for  any  accident.  It  is  difficult 
to  imagine  the  frame  of  mind,  but  there  it  was,  and 
there  to  this  day  the  urn  remains.  The  question  could 
have  been  settled  by  any  lawyer,  or  Madox  Brown 
might  have  had  some  clause  that  provided  for  his  in- 
demnity inserted  in  his  lease.  And,  just  as  the  urn 
itself  set  the  tone  of  the  old  immense  Georgian  man- 
sion fallen  from  glory,  so  perhaps  the  fact  that  it  re- 
mained for  so  long  the  topic  of  conversation  set  the 
note  of  the  painters,  the  painter-poetc,  the  poet- 
craftsmen,  the  painter-musicians,  the  filibuster  verse- 
writers,  and  all  that  singular  collection  of  men  versed 
in  the  arts.  They  assembled  and  revelled  compara- 
tively modestly  in  the  rooms  where  Colonel  Newcome 
and  his  fellow-directors  of  the  Bundelcund  Board  had 
partaken  of  mulligatawny  and  spiced  punch  before 
the  sideboard  that  displayed  its  knife-boxes  with  the 
green-handled  knives  in  their  serried  phalanxes. 

But,  for  the  matter  of  that,  Madox  Brown's  own  side- 
board also  displayed  its  green-handled  knives,  which  al- 
ways seemed  to  me  to  place  him  as  the  man  of  the  old 
school  in  which  he  was  born  and  remained  to  the  end 

16 


THE    INNER    CIRCLE 


of  his  days.  If  he  was  impracticable,  he  hadn't  about 
him  a  touch  of  the  Bohemian;  if  he  was  romantic,  his 
romances  took  place  along  ordered  lines.  Every 
friend's  son  of  his  who  went  into  the  navy  was  des- 
tined in  his  eyes  to  become,  not  a  pirate,  but  at  least 
a  port-admiral.  Every  young  lawyer  that  he  knew 
was  certain,  even  if  he  were  only  a  solicitor,  to  become 
Lord  Chancellor,  and  every  young  poet  who  presented 
him  with  a  copy  of  his  first  work  was  destined  for  the 
Laureateship.  And  he  really  believed  in  these  ro- 
mantic prognostications,  which  came  from  him  with- 
out end  as  without  selection.  So  that  if  he  was  the 
first  to  give  a  helping  hand  to  D.  G.  Rossetti,  his 
patronage  in  one  or  two  other  instances  was  not  so 
"Wisely  bestowed. 

He  was,  of  course,  the  sworn  foe  of  the  Royal 
Academy.  For  him  they  were  always,  the  members 
of  that  august  body,  "those  damned  academicians/' 
with  a  particular  note  of  acerbity  upon  the  expletive. 
Yet  I  very  well  remember,  upon  the  appearance  of  the 
first  numbers  of  the  Daily  Graphic,  that  Madox 
Brown,  being  exceedingly  struck  by  the  line  engrav- 
ings of  one  of  the  artists  that  paper  regularly  employed 
to  render  social  functions,  exclaimed: 

"By  Jove!  if  young  Cleaver  goes  on  as  well  as  he 
has  begun,  those  damned  academicians,  supposing 
they  had  any  sense,  would  elect  him  president  right 
away!"  Thus  it  will  be  seen  that  the  business  of 
romance  was  not  to  sweep  away  the  Royal  Academy, 

'7 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

was  not  to  found  an  opposing  salon,  but  it  was  to 
capture  the  established  body  by  storm,  leaping,  as  it 
were,  on  to  the  very  quarter-deck,  and  setting  to  the 
old  ship  a  new  course.  The  characteristic,  in  fact,  of 
all  these  men  was  their  warm-heartedness,  their  en- 
mity for  the  formal,  for  the  frigid,  for  the  ungenerous. 
It  cannot  be  said  that  any  of  them  despised  money.  I 
doubt  whether  it  would  even  be  said  that  any  of  them 
did  not,  at  one  time  or  another,  seek  for  popularity, 
or  try  to  paint,  write,  or  decorate  pot-boilers.  But  they 
were  naively  unable  to  do  it.  To  the  timid — and  the 
public  is  always  the  timid — what  was  individual  in 
their  characters  was  always  alarming.  It  was  alarm- 
ing even  when  they  tried  to  paint  the  conventional 
dog-and-girl  pictures  of  the  Christmas  supplement. 
The  dogs  were  too  like  dogs  and  did  not  simper;  the 
little  girls  were  too  like  little  girls.  They  would  be 
probably  rendered  as  just  losing  their  first  teeth. 

In  spite  of  the  Italianism  of  Rossetti,  who  was  never 
in  Italy,  and  the  medievalism  of  Morris,  who  had 
never  looked  medievalism,  with  its  cruelties,  its  filth, 
its  stenches,  and  its  avarice,  in  the  face — in  spite  of 
these  tendencies  that  were  forced  upon  them  by  those 
two  contagious  spirits,  the  whole  note  of  this  old, 
romantic  circle  was  national,  was  astonishingly  Eng- 
lish, was  Georgian  even.  They  seemed  to  date  from 
the  Regency,  and  to  have  skipped  altogether  the  bane- 
ful influences  of  early  Victorianism  and  of  the  com- 
merciality  that  the  Prince  Consort  spread  through 

18 


THE    INNER    CIRCLE 


England.  They  seem  to  me  to  resemble  in  their  lives 
— and  perhaps  in  their  lives  they  were  greater  than 
their  works — to  resemble  nothing  so  much  as  a  group 
of  old-fashioned  ships'  captains.  Madox  Brown,  in- 
deed, was  nominated  for  a  midshipman  in  the  year 
1827.  His  father  had  fought  on  the  famous  Arethusa 
in  the  classic  fight  with  the  Belle  Poule.  And  but  for 
the  fact  that  his  father  quarrelled  with  Commodore 
Coffin,  and  so  lost  all  hope  of  influence  at  the  Ad- 
miralty, it  is  probable  that  Madox  Brown  would  never 
have  painted  a  picture  or  have  lived  in  Colonel  New- 
come's  house.  Indeed,  on  the  last  occasion  when  I  saw 
William  Morris  I  happened  to  meet  him  in  Portland 
Place.  He  was  going  to  the  house  of  a  peer,  that  his 
firm  was  engaged  in  decorating,  and  he  took  me  with 
him  to  look  at  the  work.  He  was  then  a  comparatively 
old  man,  and  his  work  had  grown  very  flamboyant,  so 
that  the  decoration  of  the  dining-room  consisted,  as  far 
as  I  can  remember,  of  one  huge  acanthus-leaf  design. 
Morris  looked  at  this  absent-mindedly,  and  said  that 
he  had  just  been  talking  to  some  members  of  a  ship's 
crew  whom  he  had  met  in  Fenchurch  Street.  They 
had  remained  for  some  time  under  the  impression 
that  he  was  a  ship's  captain.  This  had  pleased  him 
very  much,  for  it  was  his  ambition  to  be  taken  for  such 
a  man.  I  have  heard,  indeed,  that  this  happened  to 
him  on  several  occasions,  on  each  of  which  he  ex- 
pressed an  equal  satisfaction.  With  a  gray  beard  like 
the  foam  of  the  sea,  with  gray  hair  through  which  he 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

continually  ran  his  hands,  erect  and  curly  on  his  fore- 
head, with  a  hooked  nose,  a  florid  complexion,  and 
clean,  clear  eyes,  dressed  in  a  blue  serge  coat,  and 
carrying,  as  a  rule,  a  satchel,  to  meet  him  was  always, 
as  it  were,  to  meet  a  sailor  ashore.  And  that  in  es- 
sence was  the  note  of  them  all.  When  they  were  at 
work  they  desired  that  everything  they  did  should  be 
shipshape;  when  they  set  their  work  down  they  be- 
came like  Jack  ashore.  And  perhaps  that  is  why 
there  is,  as  a  rule,  such  a  scarcity  of  artists  in  Eng- 
land. Perhaps  to  what  is  artistic  in  the  nation  the 
sea  has  always  called  too  strongly. 


II 

THE    OUTER   RING 

"NTOVEMBER  yth.  Dined  with  William  Ros- 
•*•  ^  setti  and  afterward  to  Browning's,  where  there 
was  a  woman  with  a  large  nose.  Hope  I  may  never 
meet  her  again.  Browning's  conversational  powers 
very  great.  He  told  some  good  stories,  one  about  the 
bygone  days  of  Drury  Lane — about  the  advice  of  a 
very  experienced  stage-carpenter  of  fifty  years'  stand- 
ing at  the  theatre,  given  to  a  young  man  who  wished 
for  an  engagement  there  but  had  not,  it  was  objected, 
voice  enough.  The  advice  was  to  get  a  pot  of  XXXX 
(ale)  and  put  it  on  the  stage  beside  him,  and,  having 
the  boards  all  to  himself,  he  was  first  to  drink  and  then 
to  halloa  with  all  his  might,  then  to  drink  again,  and 
so  on — which  the  aspirant  literally  did — remaining,  of 
course,  a  muff,  as  he  had  begun.  However,  I  spoil 
that  one!  Browning  said  that  one  evening  he  was  at 
Carlyle's.  That  sage  teacher,  after  abusing  Mozart, 
Beethoven,  and  modern  music  generally,  let  Mrs. 
Carlyle  play  to  show  Browning  what  was  the  right 
sort  of  music,  which  was  some  Scotch  tune  on  an  old 
piano  with  such  base  as  pleased  Providence — or,  rather, 

21 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

said  Browning,  as  did  not  please  Providence.  An 
Italian  sinner,  who  belonged  to  the  highest  degree  of 
criminality,  which  requires  some  very  exalted  dignitary 
of  the  church  before  absolution  can  be  obtained  for 
atrocities  too  heinous  for  the  powers  of  the  ordinary 
priest,  Browning  likened  to  a  spider  who,  having  fallen 
into  a  bottle  of  ink,  gets  out  and  crawls  and  sprawls 
and  blots  right  over  the  whole  of  God's  table  of  laws. 
"...  8th.  Painted  at  William  Rossetti's  from  eight 

o 

till  twelve.  Gabriel  came  in.  William,  wishing  to  go 
early,  Gabriel  proposed  that  he  should  wait  five  min- 
utes and  they  would  go  together,  when,  William  being 
got  to  sleep  on  the  sofa,  Gabriel  commenced  telling  me 
how  he  intended  to  get  married  at  once  to  Guggums 
(Miss  Biddall) — off  to  Algeria!  !  !  and  so  poor  Will- 
iam's five  minutes  lasted  till  2.30  A.M. 

"...  I  went  to  a  meeting  of  the  sub-committee  about 
the  testimonial  of  Ruskin's,  he  having  noticed  my 
absence  from  the  previous  one  with  regret.  Ruskin 
was  playful  and  childish  and  the  tea-table  overcharged 
with  cakes  and  sweets  as  for  a  juvenile  party.  Then 
about  an  hour  later  cake  and  wine  were  again  pro- 
duced, of  which  Ruskin  again  partook  largely,  reach- 
ing out  with  his  thin  paw  and  swiftly  absorbing  three 
or  four  large  lumps  of  cake  in  succession.  At  home  he 
looks  young  and  rompish.  At  the  meeting  at  Hunt's 
he  looked  old  and  ungainly,  but  his  power  and  elo- 
quence as  a  speaker  were  Homeric.  But  I  said  at  the 
time  that  but  for  his  speaking  he  was  in  appearance 

22 


THE    OUTER    RING 


like  a  cross  between  a  fiend  and  a  tallow-chandler. 
...  At  night  to  the  Working  Men's  College  with 
Gabriel  and  then  a  public  meeting  to  hear  Professor 
Maurice  spouting  and  Ruskin  jawing.  Ruskin  was 
as  eloquent  as  ever,  and  is  widely  popular  with  the 
men.  He  flattered  Rossetti  in  his  presence  hugely 
and  spoke  of  Munroe  in  conjunction  with  Baron 
Marochetti  as  the  two  noble  sculptors  whom  all  the 
aristocracy  patronized — and  never  one  word  about 
Woolner,  whose  bust  he  had  just  before  gone  into 
ecstasies  about  and  invited  to  dinner.  This  at  a  mo- 
ment when  Woolner's  pupils  of  the  college  were  all 
present.  Rossetti  says  Ruskin  is  a  sneak  and  loves 
him,  Rossetti,  because  he  is  one,  too,  and  Hunt  he  half 
likes  because  he  is  half  a  sneak,  but  he  hates  Woolner 
because  he  is  manly  and  straightforward,  and  me  be- 
cause I  am  ditto.  He  adored  Millais  because  Millais 
was  the  prince  of  sneaks,  but  Millais  was  too  much  so, 
for  he  sneaked  away  his  wife  and  so  he  is  obliged  to 
hate  him  for  too  much  of  his  favorite  quality.  Ros- 
setti, in  fact,  was  in  such  a  rage  about  Ruskin  and 
Woolner  that  he  bullied  Munroe  all  the  way  home, 
wishing  to  take  every  cab  he  encountered. 

"  January  ayth.  To  Jones's  (Sir  Edward  Burne- 
Jones)  yesterday  evening  with  an  outfit  that  Emma 
had  purchased  at  his  request  for  a  poor,  miserable  girl 
of  seventeen  he  had  met  in  the  streets  at  2  A.M.  The 
coldest  night  this  winter — scarcely  any  clothes,  and 
starving,  after  five  weeks  of  London  life.  Jones  gave 

23 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

her  money  and  told  her  to  call  next  morning,  which 
she  did,  telling  her  story  and  that  she  had  parents  will- 
ing to  receive  her  back  again  in  the  country.  Jones 
got  me  to  ask  Emma  to  buy  her  this  outfit  and  has  sent 
her  home  this  morning.  Jones  brought  Miss  Mac- 
donald  and  I  didn't  ask  any  questions.  (Miss 
Macdonald  is  now  Lady  Burne- Jones.)  This  little 
girl  seems  to  threaten  to  turn  out  another  genius.  She 
is  coming  here  to  paint  to-morrow.  Her  designs  in 
pen-and-ink  show  real  intellect.  Jones  is  going  to  cut 
Topsy  (William  Morris).  He  says  his  overbearing 
temper  is  becoming  quite  insupportable  as  well  as  his 
conceit.  At  Manchester,  to  give  one  recording  line  to 
it,  all  that  I  remember  is  that  an  old  English  picture 
with  Richard  II.  in  it  was  the  only  beautiful  work  of 
the  old  masters,  and  Hunt  and  Millais  the  only  fine 
among  the  new.  Hunt,  in  fact,  made  the  exhibition. 
The  music  was  jolly  and  the  waiters  tried  very  hard 
to  cheat." 

Such  were  the  daily  preoccupations  of  this  small 
circle  as  recorded — with  a  spelling  whose  barbarity  I 
have  not  attempted  to  reproduce — in  Madox  Brown's 
diary.  If  the  bickerings  seem  unreasonably  ferocious, 
let  it  be  remembered  that  in  spite  of  them  the  unions 
were  very  close.  Rossetti,  who  called  Ruskin  and 
himself  sneaks,  put  up  with  Ruskin's  eccentricities  and 
Ruskin  put  up  with  Rossetti's  incredible  and  trying  pe- 
culiarities for  many  years,  and  Burne- Jones,  who  was 

24 


SIR      EDWARD      BURNE-JONES 


THE    OUTER    RING 


going  cO  cut  Topsy  for  good,  retained  for  this  friend  of 
his  to  the  end  of  their  lives  a  friendship  which  is  among 
the  most  touching  of  modern  times.  And  the  secret  of 
it  is,  no  doubt,  to  be  found  in  the  spirit  of  the  last  pas- 
sage that  I  have  quoted.  These  men  might  say  that 
So-and-so  was  a  sneak,  or  that  some  one  else  was  the 
prince  of  sneaks,  but  they  said  also  that  So-and-so 
"made"  an  exhibition  with  his  pictures,  and  that  the 
other  man's  were  the  finest  of  modern  works.  It  was 
the  strong  personalities  that  made  them  bicker  con- 
stantly, but  it  was  the  strong  personalities  that  gave 
them  their  devotion  to  their  art,  and  it  was  the  de- 
votion to  their  art  that  held  them  all  together.  It 
is  for  this  reason  that  these  painters  and  these 
poets,  distinguished  by  singular  merits  and  by  de- 
merits as  singular,  made  upon  the  English-speaking 
world  a  mark  such  as  perhaps  no  body  of  men  has 
made  upon  intellectual  Anglo-Saxondom  since  the  days 
of  Shakespeare.  For  it  is  one  of  the  saddening  things 
in  Anglo-Saxon  life  that  any  sort  of  union  for  an 
aesthetic  or  for  an  intellectual  purpose  seems  to  be 
almost  an  impossibility.  Anglo-Saxon  writers,  as  a 
rule,  sit  in  the  British  Islands,  each  on  his  little  hill 
surrounded  each  by  his  satellites,  moodily  jealous 
of  the  fame  of  each  of  his  rivals,  incapable  of 
realizing  that  the  strength  of  several  men  together 
is  very  much  stronger  than  the  combined  strengths 
of  the  same  number  of  men  acting  apart.  But  it 
was  the  union  of  these  men  in  matters  of  art  that 

25 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

gave  them  their  driving  force  against  a  world  which 
very  much  did  not  want  them.  They  pushed  their 
way  among  buyers;  they  pushed  their  way  into  ex- 
hibitions, and  it  was  an  absolutely  certain  thing  that 
as  soon  as  one  of  them  had  got  a  foothold  he  never 
rested  until  he  had  helped  in  as  many  of  his  friends 
as  the  walls  would  hold.  With  just  the  same  frenzy 
as,  in  private  and  among  themselves,  these  men  pro- 
claimed each  other  sneaks,  muffs,  and  even  thieves 
— with  exactly  the  same  frenzy  did  they  declare 
each  other  to  picture  buyers  to  be  great  and  in- 
comparable geniuses.  And,  as  may  be  observed  by 
the  foregoing  quotations,  for  any  one  of  them  to  leave 
the  other  of  them  out  of  his  praises  was  to  commit  the 
unpardonable  sin.  So,  bickering  like  swashbucklers 
or  like  school-boys  about  wine,  women,  and  song, 
they  pushed  onward  to  prosperity  and  to  fame. 

In  those  days  there  was  in  England  a  class  of  rich 
merchants  which  retained  still  the  mediaeval  idea  that 
to  patronize  the  arts  had  about  it  a  sort  of  super-virtue. 
Such  patronage  had  for  them  something  glamourous, 
something  luxurious,  something  splendid.  They  were 
mostly  in  the  north  and  in  the  Midlands.  Thus  there 
were  Peter  Millar,  of  Liverpool;  George  Rae,  of 
Birkenhead  ;  Leathart,  of  Gateshead,  and  Plint,  of 
Birmingham.  And  while  the  artists  strove  among 
themselves,  so  did  these  patrons,  each  with  his  own 
eccentricities,  contend  for  their  works.  They  were 
as  a  rule  almost  as  bluff  as  the  artists,  and  they  had 

26 


THE    OUTER    RING 


also  almost  as  keen  a  belief  that  the  fine  arts  could 
save  a  man's  soul.  Here  is  a  portrait  of  one  of  these 
buyers — Mr.  Peter  Millar,  a  ship  owner  of  Liverpool, 
who  supported  out  of  his  own  pocket  several  artists 
of  merit  sufficient  to  let  them  starve.  His  name 
should  have  its  little  niche  among  the  monuments 
devoted  to  Good  Samaritans  and  to  merchant  princes : 
"I  may  notice  that  Mr.  Millar's  hospitality  is  some- 
what peculiar  in  its  kind.  His  dinner,  which  is  at  six, 
is  of  one  joint  and  vegetable,  without  pudding.  Bottled 
beer  for  only  drink — I  never  saw  any  wine.  His  wife 
dines  at  another  table  with  his  daughters.  After 
dinner  he  instantly  hurries  you  off  to  tea  and  then  back 
again  to  smoke.  He  calls  it  a  meat  tea  and  boasts  that 
few  people  who  have  ever  dined  with  him  have  come 
back  again.  All  day  long  I  was  going  here  and  there 
with  him,  dodging  back  to  his  office  to  smoke  and  then 
off  again  after  something  fresh.  The  chief  things  I 
saw  were  chain  cables  forged  and  Hilton's  *  Cruci- 
fixion,' which  is  jolly  fine.  .  .  .  This  Millar  is  a  jolly, 
kind  old  man  with  streaming  white  hair,  fine  features, 
and  a  beautiful  keen  eye,  like  Mulready,  and  some- 
thing like  John  Cross,  too.  A  rich  brogue,  a  pipe  of 
Cavendish,  and  a  smart  rejoinder  with  a  pleasant  word 
for  every  man,  woman,  or  child  he  meets  in  the  streets 
are  characteristic  of  him.  His  house  is  full  of  pictures 
even  to  the  kitchen,  which  is  covered  with  them.  Many 
he  has  at  all  his  friends'  houses  in  Liverpool,  and  his 
house  in  Bute  is  filled  with  his  inferior  ones.  Many 
3  27 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

splendid  Linnells,  fine  Constables,  and  good  Turners, 
and  works  by  a  Fenchman,  Dellefant,  are  among  the 
most  marked  of  his  collection,  plus  a  host  of  good 
pictures  by  Liverpool  artists,  Davis,  Tongue,  and 
Windus  chiefly." 

These  extracts  from  Madox  Brown's  diary  belong 
to  a  period  somewhat  earlier  than  that  of  which  I  wrote 
in  the  preceding  chapter.  They  show  the  movement 
getting  ready,  as  it  were,  to  move  faster,  but  moving 
already,  and  they  reveal  the  principal  figures  very  much 
as  they  were.  And  gradually  these  principal  actors 
attracted  to  themselves  each  a  host  of  satellites,  of 
parasites,  of  dependents,  of  disciples.  Some  of  these 
achieved  fame  and  died;  some  of  them  sponged  all 
their  lives  and  died  in  the  King's  Bench  Prison;  some 
achieved  fame  and  disgrace;  some,  like  Mr.  William 
de  Morgan,  still  live  and  have  honorable  renown; 
some,  like  Meredith  and  like  Whistler,  became  early 
detached  from  the  great  swarm,  to  shine,  solitary 
planets  in  the  sky.  But  there  are  very  few  of  the  older 
or  of  the  lately  deceased  men  of  prominence  in  the  arts 
who  were  not  in  one  way  or  other  connected  with  this 
Old  Circle.  Thus  Swinburne,  young,  golden-haired, 
golden-tongued,  and  spendid,  was  the  constant  com- 
panion of  Rossetti  and  his  wife,  the  almost  legendary 
Miss  Siddall,  and  later  a  very  frequent  inmate  of  the 
house  in  Fitzroy  Square.  And,  indeed,  the  bonds  be- 
tween this  poet  and  this  painter  were  closer  than  any 
such  statements  can  imply.  Meredith's  connection 

28 


ALGERNON       CHARLES      SWINBURNE 


THE    OUTER    RING 


with  the  movement  was,  as  to  its  facts,  somewhat  more 
mysterious,  but  is  none  the  less  readily  comprehensible. 
What  has  been  called  the  famous  "Ham  and  Egg" 
story  seems  to  put  Mr.  Meredith  in  the  somewhat 
ridiculous  position  of  being  unable  to  face  the  spectacle 
of  ham  and  eggs  upon  Rossetti's  breakfast  table;  but 
this  was  very  unlike  Mr.  Meredith,  who,  delicate  and 
austere  poet  as  he  was,  had,  as  a  novelist,  a  proper 
appreciation  for  the  virtues  of  such  things  as  beef  and 
ale.  The  position  of  Mr.  Meredith  in  the  house- 
hold at  Cheyne  Walk — a  large  mansion  that  in  Tudor 
days  had  been  the  Dower  House  of  the  Queens  of 
England  and  in  which,  at  one  time,  D.  G.  Rossetti, 
William  Rossetti,  Swinburne,  and  Meredith  attempted 
a  not  very  successful  communal  household — the  posi- 
tion of  Mr.  Meredith  in  this  settlement  remains  a 
little  mysterious.  The  ham-and-egg  story  made  it 
appear  that  Mr.  Meredith  did  not  stop  for  more  than 
one  minute  in  the  establishment,  but  fled  at  the  sight 
of  the  substantial  foods  upon  the  table.  In  a  letter  to 
the  English  Review  of  last  year  Mr.  Meredith  alto- 
gether denied  the  ham-and-egg  story,  pointing  out 
that  his  version  of  the  affair  would  be  that,  during  a 
stay  of  an  indefinite  period  in  the  household  at  Cheyne 
Walk,  he  had  observed  with  alarm  Rossetti's  habit  of 
consuming  large  quantities  of  meat  and  neglecting  al- 
together to  take  exercise.  Mr.  Edward  Clodd,  on  the 
other  hand,  informed  me  the  other  day  that  Meredith 
had  assured  him  that  he  had  never  lived  with  Rossetti 

29 


MEMORIES   AND    IMPRESSIONS 

at  all.  I  have,  however,  in  my  possession  letters 
which,  by  their  date,  prove  that  Mr.  Meredith  lived 
there  at  least  one  month  in  the  household  at  Cheyne 
Walk.  Madox  Brown's  own  version  of  the  episode 
— and  he  was  so  constantly  at  Cheyne  Walk  that  his 
story,  if  picturesque,  has  in  it  the  possibility  of  truth 
—Madox  Brown's  story  was  as  follows : 

The  Pre-Raphaelite  painters  and  writers  were  at- 
tracted earlier  than  any  other  men  by  the  merits  and 
charms  of  Mr.  Meredith's  poems.  From  this  connec- 
tion sprang  an  acquaintanceship  between  Rossetti  and 
Meredith,  and  the  acquaintanceship  led  to  the  sugges- 
tion by  Rossetti  that  Meredith  should  make  a  fourth 
in  the  household.  This  suggestion  Meredith  accepted. 
The  arrangement  was  that  each  of  the  four  men  should 
contribute  his  share  of  the  rent  and  of  household  bills, 
but  Mr.  Meredith  was  at  that  time  in  circumstances 
of  an  extreme  poverty  and,  while  paying  his  rent,  he 
was  unable  or  unwilling  to  join  in  the  household  ex- 
penses. Thus  he  never  appeared  at  table.  This 
may  have  been  because  he  disliked  the  food;  but  the 
Pre-Raphaelites  imagined  that  he  was  starving  him- 
self for  the  sake  of  pride.  They  attempted,  therefore, 
by  sending  up  small  breakfast  dishes  to  his  room  and 
by  similar  attentions  to  provide  him  with  some  meas- 
ure of  comfort.  It  is  possible  that  these  dishes  dis- 
gusted him,  but  it  is  still  more  possible  that  they  dis- 
turbed his  pride,  which  was  considerable.  According 
to  Madox  Brown,  the  end  came  one  day  when  the 

3° 


THE    OUTER    RING 


benevolent  poets  substituted  for  the  cracked  boots 
which  he  put  outside  his  door  to  be  cleaned  a  new  pair 
of  exactly  the  same  size  and  make.  He  put  on  the 
boots,  went  out,  and,  having  forwarded  a  check  for 
the  quarter's  rent,  never  returned. 

But  supposing  this  story  to  be  a  mere  delusion  of 
Madox  Brown's — though  I  can  well  believe  it  to  be 
true  enough — there  is  no  reason  why  something  of  the 
sort  should  not  have  happened,  and  why  Meredith 
should  not  equally  truthfully  represent  that  Rossetti's 
methods  of  housekeeping  were  trying  to  his  refined 
sensibilities.  For  in  person  and  in  habits  Mr.  Mere- 
dith, with  his  mordant  humor,  his  clean,  quick  in- 
telligence, and  his  impatience  of  anything  approaching 
the  slovenly,  was  exactly  the  man  to  suffer  the  keenest 
anguish  in  any  household  that  was  conducted  by  the 
poet-artist.  It  is  true  that  at  that  time  Rossetti  was 
not  sole  ruler  of  the  house,  but  he  was  certainly  the 
dominant  spirit,  and  his  was  a  spirit  in  matters  of  the 
world  easy-going,  disorderly,  and  large  in  the  extreme. 
You  have  to  consider  the  Cheyne  Walk  house  as  a 
largeish,  rather  gloomy  Queen  Anne  mansion  with 
portions  of  a  still  older  architecture.  The  furnishings 
were  in  no  sense  aesthetic.  It  is  true  there  were  rather 
garish  sofas  designed  for  and  executed  by  Morris  & 
Company,  but  most  of  the  things  had  been  picked  up 
by  Rossetti  without  any  particular  regard  for  coherence 
of  aesthetic  scheme.  Gilded  sunfishes  hung  from  the 
ceilings  along  with  drop  lustres  of  the  most  excruciat- 

31 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

ingly  Victorian  type,  and  gilded  lamps  from  the  palace 
of  George  IV.  at  Brighton.  There  were  all  sorts  of 
chinoiseries,  cabinets,  screens,  blue  china,  and  pea- 
cocks' feathers.  The  dustbins  were  full  of  priceless 
plates  off  which  Rossetti  dined  and  which  the  servants 
broke  in  the  kitchen.  Rossetti,  in  fact,  surrounded 
himself  with  anything  that  he  could  find  that  was 
quaint  and  bizarre,  whether  of  the  dead  or  the  live 
world.  So  that  the  image  of  his  house,  dominated  as 
it  was  by  his  wonderful  personality,  was  that  of  a  sin- 
gular warren  of  oddities.  Speaking  impressionisti- 
cally  we  may  say  that  supposing  an  earthquake  had 
shaken  the  house  down,  or,  still  more,  supposing  that 
some  gigantic  hand  could  have  taken  it  up  and  shaken 
its  contents  out  as  from  a  box,  there  would  have  issued 
out  a  most  extraordinary  collection — raccoons,  arma- 
dillos, wombats,  a  Zebu  bull,  peacocks,  models,  mis- 
tresses, and  an  army  of  queer  male  and  female  "bad 
hats,"  who  might  be  as  engagingly  criminal  as  they 
liked  as  long  as  they  were  engaging,  as  long  as  they 
were  quaint,  as  long  as  they  were  interesting.  They 
cadged  on  Rossetti,  they  stole  from  him,  they  black- 
mailed him,  they  succeeded,  indeed,  in  driving  him 
mad;  but  I  think  they  all  worshipped  him.  He  had, 
in  fact,  a  most  extraordinary  gift  of  inspiring  en- 
thusiasm, this  singular,  Italianate  man,  who  had 
all  an  Italian's  powers  of  extracting  money  from 
clients,  who  worried  people  to  death  with  his  eccen- 
tricities, who  drove  them  crazy  with  his  jealousies,  who 

32 


JAMES      M'NEILL      WHISTLER 


THE    OUTER    RING 


charmed  them  into  ecstasies  with  his  tongue  and  with 
his  eyes.  "Why  is  he  not  some  great  king?"  wrote 
one  Pre-Raphaelite  poet  who  was  stopping  with  him, 
to  another,  "that  we  might  lay  down  our  lives  for 
him  ?"  And  curiously  enough,  one  of  the  watchers  at 
Whistler's  bedside  during  that  painter's  last  hours  has 
informed  me  that,  something  to  the  discredit  of  Ros- 
setti  having  been  uttered  in  conversation,  Whistler 
opened  his  eyes  and  said:  "You  must  not  say  any- 
thing against  Rossetti.  Rossetti  was  a  king." 

This  may  have  been  said  partly  to  tease  his  listeners, 
whose  styles  of  painting  were  anything  rather  than 
Rossettian,  but  Whistler  certainly  received  nothing 
but  kindness  at  the  hands  of  the  Pre-Raphaelite  group. 
Looking  through  some  old  papers  the  other  day  I  came 
upon  a  circular  that  Madox  Brown  had  had  printed, 
drawing  the  attention  of  all  his  old  patrons  to  the  merits 
of  Whistler's  etchings,  and  begging  them  in  the  most 
urgent  terms  to  make  purchases  because  Whistler  was 
"  a  great  genius." 

Now,  upon  one  occasion  Madox  Brown,  going  to  a 
tea-party  at  the  Whistlers'  in  Chelsea,  was  met  in  the 
hall  by  Mrs.  Whistler,  who  begged  him  to  go  to  the 
poulterer's  and  purchase  a  pound  of  butter.  The 
bread  was  cut,  but  there  was  nothing  to  put  upon  it. 
There  was  no  money  in  the  house,  the  poulterer  had 
cut  off  his  credit,  and,  Mrs.  Whistler  said,  she  dare  not 
send  her  husband,  for  he  would  certainly  punch  that 
tradesman's  head. 

33 


MEMORIES   AND    IMPRESSIONS 

So  that  not  nearly  all  the  men  whom  this  circle  en- 
couraged, helped,  taught,  or  filled  with  the  contagion 
of  enthusiasm  were  by  any  means  ignoble.  Indeed, 
every  one  of  them  had  some  quality  or  other.  Thus 
there  was  a  painter  whom  we  will  call  P.,  whose 
indigence  was  remarkable,  but  whose  talents  are  now 
considerably  recognized.  This  painter  had  a  chance 
of  a  commission  to  make  illustrations  for  a  guide-book 
dealing  with  Wales.  The  commission,  however,  de- 
pended upon  the  drawings  meeting  with  approval,  and 
Mr.  P.,  being  without  the  necessary  means  of  paying 
for  his  travels,  applied  to  Madox  Brown  for  a  loan. 
Madox  Brown  produced  the  money,  and  then,  re- 
membering that  he  had  intended  to  take  a  holiday 
himself,  decided  to  accompany  his  friend.  They  ar- 
rived upon  a  given  morning  toward  two  o'clock  in  some 
Welsh  watering-place,  having  walked  through  the  day 
and  a  greater  part  of  the  night  with  their  knapsacks 
on  their  backs.  They  were  unable  to  rouse  anybody 
at  the  inn,  there  was  not  a  soul  in  the  streets,  there  was 
nothing  but  a  long  esplanade  with  houses  whose  win- 
dows gave  onto  the  ground. 

"Well,  I'm  going  to  have  a  sleep,"  P.  said.  "But 
that  is  impossible,"  Madox  Brown  answered.  "Not 
at  all,"  P.  rejoined  with  a  happy  confidence;  and, 
pulling  his  knapsack  round  his  body,  he  produced  his 
pallet-knife.  With  this  in  his  hand,  to  the  horror  of 
Madox  Brown,  he  approached  the  drawing-room 
window  of  one  of  the  lodging-houses.  He  slipped  the 

34 


THE    OUTER    RING 


knife  through  the  crack,  pushed  back  the  catch,  opened 
the  window  and  got  in,  followed  eventually  by  his  more 
timid  companion.  Having  locked  the  door  from  the 
inside  to  prevent  intrusion,  they  lay  down  upon  the 
sofa  and  on  chairs  and  proceeded  to  sleep  till  the 
morning,  when  they  got  out  of  the  window,  once  more 
closed  it,  and  went  on  their  way.  I  have  always 
wondered  what  the  housemaid  thought  in  the  morning 
when  she  came  down  and  found  the  drawing-room 
door  locked  from  the  inside. 

On  the  next  night  they  appeared  to  be  in  an  almost 
similar  danger  of  bedlessness.  They  arrived  at  a 
small  village  which  contained  only  one  inn,  and  that 
was  filled  with  a  large  concourse  of  Welsh-speaking 
people.  The  landlord,  speaking  rather  broken  Eng- 
lish, told  them  that  they  could  not  have  a  room  or  a 
bed.  There  was  a  room  with  two  beds  in  it,  but  they 
could  not  have  it.  This  enraged  Mr.  P.  beyond  de- 
scription. He  vowed  that  not  only  would  he  have 
the  law  on  the  landlord,  but  he  would  immediately 
break  his  head;  and  Mr.  P.  being  a  redoubtable 
boxer,  his  threat  was  no  mean  one.  So  that,  having 
consulted  with  his  Welsh  friends,  the  host  made  signs 
to  them  that  they  could  have  the  room  in  an  hour, 
which  he  indicated  by  pointing  at  the  clock.  In  an 
hour,  accordingly,  they  were  ushered  into  a  room 
which  contained  a  large  and  comfortable  double  bed. 
Mr.  P.  undressed  and  retired.  Madox  Brown  simi- 
larly undressed  and  was  about  to  step  into  bed  when 

35 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

he  placed  his  bare  foot  upon  something  of  an  exceed- 
ingly ghastly  coldness.  He  gave  a  cry  which  roused 
Mr.  P.  Mr.  P.  sprang  from  the  bed,  and,  bending 
down,  caught  hold  of  a  man's  hand.  He  proceeded 
to  drag  out  the  man,  who  displayed  a  throat  cut  from 
ear  to  ear.  "Oh,  is  that  all  ?"  Mr.  P.  said,  and  having 
shoved  the  corpse  under  the  bed  he  retired  upon  it  and 
slept  tranquilly.  Madox  Brown  passed  the  night  in 
the  coffee-room. 

Upon  this  walking  tour  Mr.  P.  picked  up  a  gypsy 
girl  who  afterward  served  as  a  model  to  many  famous 
academicians.  He  carried  her  off  with  him  to  London, 
where  he  installed  her  in  his  studio.  There  was 
nothing  singular  about  this;  but  what  amazed  Mr.  P.'s 
friends  was  the  fact  that  Mr.  P.,  the  most  bellicose  of 
mortals,  from  that  moment  did  not  issue  outside  his 
house.  The  obvious  reason  for  this  was  a  gypsy  of 
huge  proportion  and  forbidding  manner  who  had 
taken  up  his  quarters  at  a  public-house  at  the  corner 
of  the  street.  P.'s  friends  gibed  at  him  for  his  want  of 
courage,  but  P.  continued  sedulously  and  taciturnly 
to  paint.  At  last  he  volunteered  the  information  that 
he  could  not  afford  to  damage  his  hands  before  he  had 
finished  his  academy  picture.  The  picture  finished, 
he  sallied  forth  at  once,  knocked  all  the  teeth  down 
the  gypsy's  throat,  and  incidentally  broke  both  his 
knuckles.  The  gypsy  girl  was  credited  with  the  retort 
that  was  once  famous  in  London.  When  P.,  who  had 
been  given  a  box  at  the  Opera,  proposed  to  take  her 

36 


THE    OUTER    RING 


with  him,  she  refused  obdurately  to  accompany  him, 
and  for  a  long  time  would  give  no  reason.  Being 
pressed,  she  finally  blurted  out:  "Ye  don't  put  a  toad 
in  your  waistcoat  pocket."  In  this  saying  she  under- 
rated the  charm  of  one  who,  till  quite  a  short  time 
ago,  was  a  popular  and  beloved  hostess  in  London, 
for  she  married  one  of  P.'s  wealthiest  patrons,  while 
poor  P.  remained  under  a  necessity  of  borrowing 
small  loans  to  the  end  of  his  life. 


Ill 

GLOOM    AND    THE    POETS 

IT  has  always  seemed  at  first  sight  a  mystery  to  me 
how  in  the  seventies  and  eighties  such  an  inor- 
dinate number  of  poets  managed  to  live  in  the  gloom 
of  central  London.  Nowadays  English  poets  live, 
as  far  as  I  know — and  I  have  reasons  for  knowing 
the  addresses  of  an  infinite  number  of  them — English 
poets  live — they  cannot  by  any  stretch  of  imagination 
be  said  to  flourish,  unless  they  have  what  is  called 
private  means — they  live  in  Bedford  Park,  a  few  in 
Chelsea,  and  a  great  many  in  the  country.  Bedford 
Park  is  a  sort  of  rash  of  villas  crowded  not  so  very 
close  together  or  so  very  far  out  of  town;  Chelsea  has 
the  river  to  give  it  air.  At  any  rate,  the  poets  of  to-day 
crowd  toward  the  light. 

But  in  those  old  days  they  seemed  filled  with  a 
passion  for  gloom.  For  I  cannot  imagine  anything 
much  more  Cimmerian  than  Bloomsbury  and  the 
west  central  districts  of  the  capital  of  England.  Yet 
here — I  am  speaking  only  impressionistically — all  the 
Pre-Raphaelite  poets  seemed  to  crowd  together,  full  of 
enthusiasm,  pouring  forth  endless  songs  about  the 

38 


GLOOM    AND    THE    POETS 

loves  of  Launcelot  and  Guinevere,  about  music  and 
moonlight.  You  have  to  think  of  it  as  a  region  of 
soot-blackened  brick  houses,  with  here  and  there  black 
squares  whose  grimy  trees  reach  up  into  a  brownish 
atmosphere.  What  there  is  not  black  is  brownish. 

Yet  here  all  these  dead  poets  seemed  to  live.  Fitzroy 
Square,  of  which  I  have  written,  is  such  a  square;  the 
Rossettis  always  circled  round  Bloomsbury.  Though 
D.  G.  Rossetti  travelled  as  far  afield  as  Chelsea, 
William  Rossetti  until  very  lately  lived  in  Euston 
Square,  which,  to  celebrate  a  murder,  changed  its 
name  to  Endsleigh  Gardens;  and  Christina — who  for 
me  is  the  most  satisfactory  of  all  the  poets  of  the 
nineteenth  century — died  in  times  of  fog  in  Woburn 
Square. 

I  suppose  they  sang  of  Launcelot  and  Guinevere 
to  take  their  own  minds  off  their  surroundings,  having 
been  driven  into  their  surroundings  by  the  combined 
desire  for  cheap  rents  and  respectable  addresses.  Some 
of  them  were  conscious  of  the  gloom,  some  no  doubt 
were  not.  Mr.  Joaquin  Miller,  coming  from  Nica- 
ragua and  Arizona  to  stay  for  a  time  in  Gower  Street 
— surely  the  longest,  the  grayest,  and  the  most  cruel 
of  all  London  streets — this  author  of  "Songs  of  the 
Sierras"  was  greeted  rapturously  by  the  Pre-Raphael- 
ite poets,  and  wrote  of  life  in  London  as  a  rush,  a 
whirl,  a  glow — all  the  motion  of  the  world.  He  wrote 
ecstatically  and  at  the  same  time  with  humility, 
pouring  out  his  verses  as  one  privileged  to  be  at  table 

39 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

with  all  the  great  ones  of  the  earth.  In  the  mornings 
he  rode  in  the  Row  among  the  "swells,"  wearing  a 
red  shirt,  cowboy  boots  and  a  sombrero;  in  the  evening 
he  attended  in  the  same  costume  at  the  dinners  of  the 
great  intellectuals,  where  brilliantly  he  was  a  feature. 
Had  he  not  been  with  Walker,  the  filibuster,  in  Nica- 
ragua ?  I  can  dimly  remember  the  face  of  Mark 
Twain — or  was  it  Bret  Harte  ? — standing  between 
open  folding  doors  at  a  party,  gazing  in  an  odd, 
puzzled  manner  at  this  brilliant  phenomena.  I  fancy 
the  great  writer,  whichever  it  was,  was  not  too 
pleased  that  this  original  should  represent  the  manners 
and  customs  of  the  United  States  in  the  eyes  of  the 
poets.  Mr.  Miller  did  them  good,  if  it  were  an  in- 
justice to  Boston.  He  represented  for  the  poets 
Romance. 

But  if  Mr.  Miller  saw  in  London  life,  light,  and  the 
hope  of  fame,  and  if  some  others  of  the  poets  saw  it 
in  similar  terms,  there  were  others  who  saw  the  city  in 
terms  realistic  enough.  Thus  poor  James  Thomson, 
writing  as  B.  V.,  sang  of  the  City  of  Dreadful  Night, 
and,  we  are  told,  drank  himself  to  death.  That  was 
the  grisly  side  of  it.  If  you  were  a  poet  you  lived  in 
deep  atmospheric  gloom  and,  to  relieve  yourself,  to  see 
color,  you  must  sing  of  Launcelot  and  Guinevere. 
If  the  visions  would  not  come,  you  must  get  stimulants 
to  give  you  them.  I  remember  as  a  child  being  present 
in  the  drawing-room  of  a  relative  just  before  a  dinner 
at  which  Tennyson  and  Browning  had  been  asked  to 

40 


GLOOM    AND    THE    POETS 

meet  a  rising  poet  to  whom  it  was  desired  to  give  a 
friendly  lift.  It  was  the  longest  and  worst  quarter  of 
an  hour  possible.  The  celebrities  fidgeted,  did  not 
talk,  looked  in  Olympian  manner  at  their  watches. 
At  last  they  went  in  to  dinner  without  the  young  poet. 
I  was  too  little  and  too  nervous  to  tell  them  that  half 
an  hour  before  I  had  seen  the  poor  fellow  lying  hope- 
lessly drunk  across  a  whelk-stall  in  the  Euston  Road. 
One  of  the  grimmest  stories  that  I  have  heard 
even  of  that  time  and  neighborhood  was  told  me 
by  the  late  Mr.  William  Sharp.  Mr.  Sharp  was  him- 
self a  poet  of  the  Pre-Raphaelites,  though  later  he 
wrote  as  Fiona  Macleod,  and  thus  joined  the  Celtic 
school  of  poetry  that  still  flourishes  in  the  person  of 
Mr.  W.  B.  Yeats.  Mr.  Sharp  had  gone  to  call  on 
Philip  Marston,  the  blind  author  of  "Songtide,"  and 
of  many  other  poems  that  in  that  day  were  considered 
to  be  a  certain  passport  to  immortality.  Going  up  the 
gloomy  stairs  of  a  really  horrible  house  near  Gower 
Street  Station,  he  heard  proceeding  from  the  blind 
poet's  rooms  a  loud  sound  of  growling,  punctuated 
with  muffled  cries  for  help.  He  found  the  poor  blind 
man  in  the  clutches  of  the  poet  I  have  just  omitted  to 
name,  crushed  beneath  him  and,  I  think,  severely 
bitten.  This  poet  had  had  an  attack  of  delirium 
tremens  and  imagined  himself  a  Bengal  tiger.  Leaving 
Marston,  he  sprang  on  all  fours  toward  Sharp,  but 
he  burst  a  blood-vessel  and  collapsed  on  the  floor. 
Sharp  lifted  him  onto  the  sofa,  took  Marston  into 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

another  room,  and  then  rushed  hatless  through  the 
streets  to  the  hospital  that  was  round  the  corner. 
The  surgeon  in  charge,  himself  drunk  and  seeing 
Sharp  covered  with  blood,  insisted  on  giving  him  in 
charge  for  murder;  Sharp,  always  a  delicate  man, 
fainted.  The  poet  was  dead  of  hemorrhage  before 
assistance  reached  him. 

But  in  gloom  and  amid  horror  they  sang  on 
bravely  of  Launcelot  and  Guinevere,  Merlin  and 
Vivien,  ballads  of  Staffs  and  Scrips,  of  music  and 
moonlight.  They  did  not — that  is  to  say — much  look 
at  the  life  that  was  around  them;  in  amid  the  glooms 
they  built  immaterial  pleasure -houses.  They  were 
not  brave  enough — that,  I  suppose,  is  why  they  are 
very  few  of  them  remembered,  and  few  of  them  great. 

I  have,  however,  very  little  sense  of  proportion  in 
this  particular  matter.  There  were  Philip  Bourke 
Marston,  Arthur  O'Shaughnessy,  "B.  V.,"  Theo 
Marzials,  Gordon  Hake,  Christina  Rossetti,  Mr. 
Edmund  Gosse,  Mr.  Hall  Caine,  Oliver  Madox 
Brown,  Mr.  Watts  Dunton,  Mr.  Swinburne,  D.  G. 
Rossetti,  Robert  Browning!  .  .  .  All  these  names  have 
been  exceedingly  familiar  to  my  mouth  and  ears  ever 
since  I  could  speak  or  hear.  In  their  own  day  each 
of  them  was  a  great  and  serious  fact.  For  there  was 
a  time — yes,  really  there  was  a  time! — when  the  pub- 
lication of  a  volume  of  poems  was  still  an  event — an 
event  making  great  names  and  fortunes  not  merely 
mediocre.  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  in  the  seventies 

42 


GLOOM    AND   THE    POETS 

and  eighties  carriages  still  blocked  Albemarle  Street; 
but  if  Mr.  O'Shaughnessy  was  understood  to  be  put- 
ting the  finishing  touches  to  the  proof-sheets  of  his 
next  volume  there  arose  an  immense  excitement 
among  all  the  other  poets,  and  all  the  Pre-Raphaelite 
circle  and  all  the  outsiders  connected  with  the  circle, 
and  all  the  connections  of  all  the  outsiders.  What  the 
book  was  going  to  be  like  was  discussed  eagerly.  So- 
and-so  was  understood  to  have  seen  the  proof-sheets,  and 
what  the  Athenceum  would  say,  or  what  the  Athenaeum 
did  say,  excited  all  the  circumjacent  authors  quite 
as  much  as  nowadays  the  winning  of  the  Derby  by  a 
horse  belonging  to  his  Majesty  the  King.  All  these 
things  are  most  extraordinarily  changed.  Small  vol- 
umes of  poems  descend  upon  one's  head  in  an  unceas- 
ing shower.  They  come  so  quick  that  one  cannot 
even  imagine  that  the  authors  have  time  themselves 
to  read  the  proof-sheets.  How  much  less,  then,  their 
friends  ?  But  as  for  fame  or  fortune !  .  .  . 

I  am  acquainted  with  an  author — I  am  much  too 
well  acquainted  with  an  author — who  one  day  had  what 
in  the  language  of  the  nineties  was  called  a  "boom." 
At  the  height  of  this  agreeable  period  he  published  a 
volume  of  poems.  It  cannot  be  said  that  the  press 
did  not  receive  him  rapturously:  he  received  a  column 
and  a  half  of  praise  in  the  Daily  Telegraph,  something 
more  than  a  column  in  the  Daily  Chronicle,  just  over 
two  columns  in  the  Times  itself,  and  three  lines  of 
contempt  in  the  Spectator,  which  alone  in  the  eighties 

4  43 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

would  have  sufficed  to  make  the  fortune  of  any  poet. 
Of  this  volume  of  poems,  heralded  and  boomed  as  it 
was  and  published  in  the  year  1908,  the  public  de- 
manded seventeen  copies.  Exactly  seventeen!  I 
remember  being  informed  by  a  person  in  authority 
that  the  sale  of  the  last  volume  of  poems  that  Swin- 
burne published  was  exactly  six  hundred  copies,  of 
which  four  hundred  and  eighty  were  bought  in 
Germany,  leaving  one  hundred  and  twenty  enthusiasts 
for  the  British  Isles  and  the  rest  of  the  Continent. 
And  this  seems  to  me  to  be  a  record  of  indifference 
heroic  in  itself.  I  do  not  know  that  it  is  a  record 
particularly  interesting,  however,  to  anybody  who  is 
not  interested  in  poets.  But  faced  with  these  facts 
both  of  the  outside  and  inside,  I  may  well  be  excused 
if  I  say  that  I  have  not  any  sense  of  proportion,  or 
any  but  the  remotest  idea  as  to  the  relative  value  of 
the  Pre-Raphaelite  or  semi-Pre-Raphaelite  poets. 

My  childhood  was  in  many  respects  a  singular  one. 
The  names  of  these  distinguished  persons  were  as 
much  in  daily  use  in  my  grandfather's  house  when  I 
was  a  child,  and  many  of  the  distinguished  persons 
were  nearly  as  often  in  the  house  itself,  as  are  in  Eng- 
land such  ordinary  household  things  as  Black's  mus- 
tard, Dash's  Worcestershire  sauce,  or  as,  in  the  case 
of  the  United  States,  that  beverage  which  lately  I  saw 
everywhere  advertised  in  enormous  letters  that  seemed 
to  flame  from  New  York  to  Philadelphia  conveying 
the  command,  "Drink  Boxie.  You  will  not  like  it 

44 


GLOOM   AND   THE    POETS 

at  first."  I  could  not  think  that  D.  G.  Rossetti 
was  a  person  any  more  remarkable  than  the  gentle- 
man with  gold  braid  round  his  hat  who  opened  for 
me  the  locked  gates  of  Fitzroy  Square,  or  that  when  I 
shook  hands  with  a  clergyman  called  Franz  Liszt  was 
it  any  more  of  an  event  than  when,  as  I  was  enjoined 
to  do,  I  performed  the  same  ceremony  with  the  cook's 
husband.  Dimly,  but  with  vivid  patches,  I  remem- 
ber being  taken  for  a  walk  by  my  father  along 
what  appeared  to  me  to  be  a  graystone  quay.  I  pre- 
sume it  was  the  Chelsea  Embankment.  There  we 
met  a  very  old,  long-bearded  man.  He  frightened  me 
quite  as  much  as  any  of  the  other  great  Victorian 
figures,  who,  to  the  eye  of  a  child,  appeared  monu- 
mental, loud-voiced,  and  distressing.  This  particular 
gentleman  at  the  instance  of  my  grandfather  related 
to  me  how  he  had  once  been  at  Weimar.  In  a  garden 
restaurant  beneath  a  May-tree  in  bloom  he  had  seen 
Schiller  and  Goethe  drinking  coffee  together.  He  had 
given  a  waiter  a  thaler  to  be  allowed  to  put  on  a  white 
apron  and  to  wait  upon  these  two  world-shaking  men, 
who,  in  court  dress  with  wigs  and  swords,  sat  at  a 
damask-covered  table.  He  had  waited  upon  them. 
Later,  I  remember  that  while  I  was  standing  with  my 
father  beside  the  doorstep  in  Tite  Street  of  the  house 
that  he  was  entering,  I  fell  down  and  he  bent  over  to 
assist  me  to  rise.  His  name  was  Thomas  Carlyle,  but 
he  is  almost  confounded  in  my  mind  with  a  gentleman 
called  Pepper.  Pepper  very  much  resembled  Carlyle, 

45 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

except  that  he  was  exceedingly  dirty.  He  used  to  sell 
penny-dreadfuls,  which  I  was  forbidden  to  purchase, 
and  I  think  the  happiest  times  of  my  childhood  were 
spent  in  a  large  coal-cellar.  Into  this  I  used  to  lock 
myself  to  read  of  the  exploits  of  Harkaway  Dick,  who 
lived  in  a  hollow  tree,  possessed  a  tame  black  panther, 
and  a  pair  of  Winchester  repeating-rifles,  with  which 
at  one  sitting  he  shot  no  less  than  forty-five  pirates 
through  a  loophole  in  the  bark  of  the  tree.  I  think 
I  have  never  since  so  fully  tasted  of  the  joys  of 
life,  not  even  when  Captain  Hook  .  .  .  but  what 
was  even  Peter  Pan  to  compare  with  Harkaway 
Dick  ? 

There  were  all  these  things  jumbled  up  in  my 
poor  little  mind  together.  I  presume  I  should  not 
remember  half  so  vividly  the  story  of  Carlyle  and  the 
author  of  "Wilhelm  Meister"  if  my  father  had  not 
subsequently  frequently  jogged  my  memory  upon  the 
point.  My  father  was  a  man  of  an  encyclopaedic 
knowledge  and  had  a  great  respect  for  the  attainments 
of  the  distinguished.  He  used,  I  remember,  habitu- 
ally to  call  me  "the  patient  but  extremely  stupid 
donkey."  This  phrase  occurred  in  Mavor's  spelling- 
book,  which  he  read  as  a  boy  in  the  city  of  Miinster 
in  Westphalia,  where  he  was  born.  He  had  a  memory 
that  was  positively  extraordinary,  and  a  gift  of  lan- 
guages no  less  great.  Thus  while  his  native  language 
was  German,  he  was  for  a  long  course  of  years  musical 
critic  to  the  Times,  London  correspondent  to  The 

46 


GLOOM   AND   THE    POETS 

Frankfurter  Zeitung,  London  musical  correspondent 
to  Le  Menestrel  of  Paris,  and  the  Tribuna,  Rome. 
He  was  also,  I  believe,  in  his  day  the  greatest  au- 
thority upon  the  Troubadours  and  the  Romance  Lan- 
guages, and  wrote  original  poems  in  modern  Proven- 
cal, and  he  was  a  favorite  pupil  of  Schopenhauer, 
and  the  bad  boy  of  his  family.  He  was  a  doctor  of 
philosophy  of  Gottingen  University,  at  that  time 
premier  university  of  Germany,  though  he  had  made 
his  studies  at  the  inferior  institution  in  Berlin.  From 
Berlin  he  was  expelled  because  of  his  remarkable 
memory.  The  circumstances  were  as  follows: 

My  father  occupied  a  room  in  a  hotel  which  had  a 
balcony  overlooking  the  Spree.  In  the  same  hotel,  but 
in  the  next  room,  there  dwelt  the  rector  of  the  univer- 
sity, and  it  happened  that  one  of  the  Prussian  princes 
was  to  be  present  at  the  ceremony  of  conferring  de- 
grees. Thus  one  evening  my  father  was  sitting  upon 
his  balcony,  while  next  door  the  worthy  rector  read  the 
address  that  he  was  afterward  to  deliver  to  the  prince. 
Apparently  the  younger  members  of  the  institution 
addressed  the  prince  before  the  dons.  At  any  rate, 
my  father,  having  heard  it  only  once,  delivered  word 
for  word  the  rector's  speech  to  his  Royal  Highness. 
The  result  was  that  the  poor  man,  who  spoke  only 
with  difficulty,  had  not  a  single  word  to  say,  and  my 
father  was  forthwith  expelled  without  his  degree. 
Being,  though  freakish,  a  person  of  spirit,  that  same 
day  he  took  the  express  to  Gottingen  and,  as  a  result, 

47 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

in  the  evening  he  telegraphed  to  his  mother:  "Have 
passed  for  doctor  with  honors  at  Gottingen,"  to  the 
consternation  of  his  parents,  who  had  not  yet  heard 
of  his  expulsion  from  Berlin.  The  exploit  pleased 
nobody.  Berlin  did  not  desire  that  he  should  be  a 
doctor  at  all;  Gottingen  was  disgusted  that  a  student 
from  an  inferior  university  should  have  passed  out  on 
top  of  their  particular  tree,  and  I  believe  that  in 
consequence  in  Germany  of  to-day  a  student  can 
only  take  his  doctor  at  his  own  particular  univer- 
sity. 

It  was  at  the  suggestion  of  Schopenhauer,  or, 
possibly,  because  his  own  lively  disposition  made 
parts  of  Germany  too  hot  to  hold  him,  that  Doctor 
Hueffer  came  to  England.  He  had  letters  of  intro- 
duction to  various  men  of  letters  in  England,  for,  for 
time  out  of  mind,  in  the  city  of  Miinster  the  HuefFer 
family  had  belonged  to  the  class  that  battens  upon 
authors.  They  have  been,  that  is  to  say,  printers  and 
publishers.  Following  his  intention  of  spreading  the 
light  of  Schopenhauer  in  England,  that  country  for 
which  Schopenhauer  had  so  immense  a  respect, 
Doctor  HuefFer  founded  a  periodical  called  The 
New  Quarterly  Review,  which  caused  him  to  lose  a 
great  deal  of  money  and  to  make  cordial  enemies 
among  the  poets  and  literary  men  to  whom  he  gave 
friendly  lifts.  I  fancy  that  the  only  traces  of  The 
New  Quarterly  Review  are  contained  in  the  limer- 
ick by  Rossetti  which  runs  as  follows: 

48 


GLOOM   AND    THE    POETS 

"There  was  a  young  German  called  Huffer, 
A  hypochondriacal  buffer; 

To  shout  Schopenhauer 

From  the  top  of  a  tower 
Was  the  highest  enjoyment  of  Huffer." 

In  London  Dr.  Hueffer  lived  first  in  Chelsea,  half- 
way between  Rossetti  and  Carlyle,  who  were  both,  I 
believe,  very  much  attached  to  him  for  various  reasons. 
Indeed,  one  of  the  first  things  that  I  can  remember, 
or  seem  to  remember,  for  the  memory  is  probably 
inaccurate,  is  that  I  lay  in  my  cradle  among  proof- 
sheets  of  Rossetti's  poems  which  my  father  was 
amiably  occupied  in  reading  for  the  press. 

In  their  day  Rossetti's  limericks  were  celebrated. 
I  do  not  know  whether  they  have  ever  been  collected. 
I  certainly  seem  to  remember  having  heard  that  some 
one  was,  or  is,  engaged  in  collecting  them.  In  that 
case  I  may  here  make  him  a  present  of  one  more  which 
was  written  on  the  flyleaf  of  a  volume  of  "Lear's 
Nonsense  Verses"  presented  by  the  poet  to  Oliver 
Madox  Brown: 

"There  was  a  young  rascal  called  Nolly, 
Whose  habits,  though  dirty,  were  jolly; 
And  when  this  book  comes 
To  be  marked  with  his  thumbs, 
You  may  know  that  its  owner  is  Nolly." 

This  engaging  trait  may  perhaps  be  capped  by  an 
anecdote  related  of  another  poet,  a  descendant  of 

49 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

many  Pre-Raphaelites,  of  whom  it  was  related  that 
while  reading  his  friend's  valuable  books  at  that 
friend's  breakfast  table  he  was  in  the  habit  of  marking 
his  place  with  a  slice  of  bacon. 

This  excellent  and  touching  anecdote  I  know  to  be 
untrue,  but  it  is  to  this  day  being  related  of  one  living 
poet  by  the  wife  of  a  living  painter  of  distinction,  she 
herself  being  to  some  extent  of  Pre-Raphaelite  con- 
nection. Such  as  it  is  it  goes  to  show  that  the  habit 
of  anecdote,  incisive,  however  wanting  in  veracity, 
is  still  remaining  to  the  surviving  connections  of  this 
Old  Circle.  For  whatever  may  have  been  the  value 
of  the  poetic  gifts  of  these  poets,  there  cannot  be  any 
doubt  that  in  their  private  conversation  they  had  singu- 
lar gifts  of  picturesque  narration.  And  certainly 
picturesque  things  were  in  the  habit  of  happening  to 
them — odd,  irresponsible,  and  partaking  perhaps  a 
little  of  nightmares.  I  remember  as  a  boy  being  set 
somewhat  inconsiderately  the  task  of  conveying  home 
a  very  distinguished  artist,  practising,  however,  an 
art  other  than  that  of  poetry.  We  had  been  at  a 
musical  evening  in  the  neighborhood  of  Swiss  Cottage, 
and  arrived  at  the  Underground  Station  just  before 
the  last  train  came  in.  My  enormously  distinguished 
temporary  ward  was  in  the  habit  of  filling  one  of  his 
trousers  pockets  with  chocolate  creams,  and  the  other 
with  large,  unset  diamonds.  With  the  chocolate 
creams  he  was  accustomed  to  solace  his  sense  of  taste 
while  he  sat  in  the  artists'  room  waiting  for  his  turn 

50 


GLOOM   AND   THE    POETS 

to  play.  With  the  diamonds  on  similar  occasions  he 
solaced  his  sense  of  touch,  plunging  his  hand  among 
them  and  moving  them  about  luxuriously.  He  would 
have  sometimes  as  many  as  twenty  or  thirty  large 
and  valuable  stones.  On  this  occasion  M.,  always 
an  excitable  person,  was  in  a  state  of  extreme  rage; 
for  at  the  party  where  he  had  played  M.  Saint- 
Sae'ns,  the  composer,  had  also  been  invited  to  play 
the  piano.  As  far  as  I  can  remember,  Saint-Saens 
was  not  a  very  good  pianist;  he  had  the  extremely 
hard  touch  of  the  organist,  and  M.  considered  that 
to  have  invited  him  to  sit  down  on  the  same  piano 
stool  was  an  insult  almost  beyond  bearing. 

The  platform  of  the  Underground  Railway  was 
more  than  usually  gloomy,  since,  the  last  down  train 
having  gone,  the  lamps  upon  the  other  platform 
had  been  extinguished.  M.  volleyed  and  thun- 
dered, and,  at  last,  just  as  the  train  came  in,  he 
thrust  both  his  hands  into  his  trousers  pockets  and 
then  waved  them  wildly  above  his  head  in  execra- 
tion of  my  insufficient  responsiveness.  There  flew 
from  the  one  pocket  a  shower  of  chocolate  creams, 
from  the  other  a  shower  of  large  diamonds.  M.  gave 
a  final  scream  upon  a  very  high  note  and  plunged 
into  a  railway  carriage.  I  was  left  divided  as  to 
whether  my  duty  were  toward  the  maestro  or  his 
jewels.  I  suppose  it  was  undue  materialism  in  myself, 
but  I  stayed  to  look  after  the  diamonds.  It  was  a 
long  and  agonizing  search.  The  station-master,  who 

51 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

imagined  I  was  as  mad  as  the  vanished  musician,  in- 
sisted that  there  were  no  diamonds,  and  extinguished 
the  station  lamps.  A  friendly  porter,  however, 
assisted  me  with  a  hand -lantern,  and  eventually  we 
recovered  about  five  diamonds,  each  perhaps  as  large 
as  my  little  finger  nail.  Whether  any  more  remained 
upon  the  platform  I  never  knew,  for  M.  also  never 
knew  how  many  jewels  he  possessed  or  carried  about 
with  him.  It  was  a  night  certainly  of  nightmare, 
for,  being  so  young  a  boy,  I  had  not  sufficient  money 
to  take  a  cab,  and  the  last  train  into  town  had  gone. 
I  had,  therefore,  to  walk  to  Claridge's  Hotel,  a  dis- 
tance of  perhaps  four  miles,  and,  arriving  there,  I 
could  not  discover  that  the  porter  had  seen  anything 
of  M.  I  therefore  thought  it  wise  to  arouse  his  wife. 
Madame  was  accustomed  to  being  awakened  at  all 
hours  of  the  night.  Her  distinguished  husband  was 
in  the  habit  of  dragging  her  impetuously  out  of  bed  to 
listen  to  his  latest  rendering  of  a  passage  of  Chopin, 
and,  indeed,  upon  this  account,  she  subsequently  di- 
vorced the  master,  such  actions  being  held  by  the 
French  courts  to  constitute  incompatibility  of  temper- 
ament. She  did  not,  however,  take  my  arousing  her 
with  any  the  greater  equanimity,  and  when  I  produced 
the  diamonds  she  upbraided  me  violently  for  having 
lost  the  master.  There  ensued  a  more  agonizing  period 
of  driving  about  in  cabs  before  we  discovered  M.  de- 
tained at  the  police  station  nearest  Baker  Street.  He 
had  in  his  vocabulary  no  English  at  all  except  some  very 

52 


GLOOM   AND   THE    POETS 

startling  specimens  of  profanity,  and  upon  arriving  at 
Baker  Street  station  he  had  spent  a  considerable  amount 
of  time  and  energy  in  attempting  to  explain  to  the  ticket 
collector  in  French  that  he  had  lost  a  sacred  charge, 
a  weakly  little  boy  incapable  of  taking  care  of  himself, 
and  as  he  did  not  even  know  the  name  of  his  hotel, 
the  police  had  taken  charge  of  him  and  were  attempt- 
ing kindly  to  keep  him  soothed  by  singing  popular 
songs  to  him  in  the  charge-room,  where  we  found  him 
quite  contented  and  happy,  beating  time  with  his  feet 
to  the  melody  of  "Two  Lovely  Black  Eyes."  I  think 
this  was  upon  the  whole  the  unhappiest  night  I  ever 
spent. 

The  mention  of  chocolate  creams  reminds  me  of 
another  musician  who  was  also  a  Pre-Raphaelite  poet 
— Mr.  Theo  Marzials.  Mr.  Marzials  was  in  his 
young  days  the  handsomest,  the  wittiest,  the  most 
brilliant,  and  the  most  charming  of  poets.  He  had  a 
career  tragic  in  the  extreme,  and,  I  believe,  is  now 
dead.  But  he  shared  with  M.  the  habit  of  keeping 
chocolate  creams  loose  in  his  pocket,  and  on  the 
last  occasion  when  I  happened  to  catch  sight  of  him 
looking  into  a  case  of  stuffed  birds  at  South  Kensington 
Museum  he  had  eaten  five  large  chocolates  in  the  space 
of  two  minutes.  As  a  musician  he  wrote  some  very 
charming  songs,  of  which  I  suppose  the  best  known 
are  "Twickenham  Ferry,"  and  the  canon,  "My  True 
Love  Hath  My  Heart."  He  wrote,  I  believe,  only  one 
volume  of  poems,  called  A  Gallery  of  Pigeons,  but  that 

53 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

contains  verse  of  a  lyrical  and  polished  sort  that,  as 
far  as  my  predilections  serve,  seems  to  me  to  be  by 
far  the  most  exquisite  that  were  produced  by  any  of 
the  lesser  Pre-Raphaelite  poets.  As  the  volume  must 
probably  be  very  rare  and  is  perhaps  quite  unknown 
nowadays,  I  venture  to  reproduce  a  couple  of  his 
miniature  poems  called  "Tragedies."  They  have 
lingered  in  my  memory  ever  since  I  was  a  young 
child: 

"  She  was  only  a  woman,  famish'd  for  loving, 

Mad  with  devotion,  and  such  slight  things; 
And  he  was  a  very  great  musician, 
And  used  to  finger  his  fiddle-strings. 

Her  heart's  sweet  gamut  is  cracking  and  breaking 
For  a  look,  for  a  touch — for  such  slight  things; 

But  he's  such  a  very  great  musician, 

Grimacing  and  fing'ring  his  fiddle-strings. 

In  the  warm  wax-light  one  lounged  at  the  spinet, 
And  high  in  the  window  came  peeping  the  moon; 

At  his  side  was  a  bowl  of  blue  china,  and  in  it 
Were  large  blush-roses,  and  cream,  and  maroon. 

They  crowded,  and  strain'd,  and  swoon'd  to  the  music, 
And  some  to  the  gild-board  languor'd  and  lay; 

They  open'd  and  breathed,  and  trembled  with  pleasure, 
And  all  the  sweet  while  they  were  fading  away!" 

And  here  is  a  third  little  poem  by  Marzials  which  I 
quote  because  it  is  headed  simply  "Chelsea": 

54 


GLOOM   AND   THE    POETS 

"And  life  is  like  a  pipe, 

And  love  is  the  fusee; 
The  pipe  draws  well,  but  bar  the  light, 
And  what's  the  use  to  me  ? 

So  light  it  up  and  puff  away- 

An  empty  morning  through, 
And  when  it's  out — why,  love  is  out, 

And  life's  as  well  out,  too!" 

But  I  do  not  know  whether  this  was  suggested  by 
Rossetti  or  Carlyle. 

Another  of  these  forgotten,  or  not  quite  forgotten, 
geniuses  was  Oliver  Madox  Brown,  who,  though  he 
died  at  the  age  of  eighteen,  had  proved  himself  at  once 
a  painter,  a  novelist,  and  a  poet.  Before  his  death 
he  had  exhibited  several  pictures  at  the  Royal  Acad- 
emy, and  had  published  with  considerable  success  one 
novel,  leaving  two  others  to  be  produced  after  his 
death.  He  must,  indeed,  have  been  a  very  remarkable 
boy,  if  we  are  to  believe  at  all  in  the  sincerity  of  the 
tributes  to  his  memory  left  by  the  distinguished  men 
of  the  Pre-Raphaelite  group,  and  Madox  Brown  re- 
mained passionately  devoted  to  his  memory  until  his 
dying  day.  Just  before  his  death  Oliver  complained 
that  his  father  smelt  of  tobacco,  whereupon  Madox 
Brown  said:  "Very  well,  my  dear,  I  will  never  smoke 
again  until  you  are  better."  And  he  never  again  did 
smoke,  although  before  that  time  he  had  been  a  per- 
petual and  very  heavy  smoker.  He  had,  indeed,  one 

55 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

singular  accomplishment  that  I  have  never  noticed  in 
any  other  man:  With  the  palette  fixed  upon  his  left 
hand  he  was  able  to  charge  and  roll  a  cigarette  with 
his  right,  rubbing  the  paper  against  his  trousers,  and 
doing  it  with  quite  extraordinary  rapidity,  so  that  the 
feat  resembled  a  conjurer's  trick.  Oliver  Madox 
Brown  died  of  blood-poisoning  in  1875,  and  it  was  not 
till  many  years  after  his  death  that  it  was  discovered 
that  beneath  his  study,  which  was  at  the  bottom  of  the 
old  house  in  Fitzroy  Square,  there  was  a  subterranean 
stable  whose  opening  was  in  the  mews  behind  the 
house,  and  which  had  neither  drains  nor  ventilation 
of  any  kind.  So  that  there  cannot  be  any  doubt  that 
the  emanations  from  this  ancient  place  of  horrors 
were  responsible  for  Oliver's  death — so  frail  a  thing 
is  genius  and  so  tenuous  its  hold  upon  existence. 

As  a  boy  I  had  a  similar  study  at  the  back  and 
bottom  of  another  old  house  of  Madox  Brown's. 
And  one  of  the  other  most  unpleasant  memories  of 
mine  were  the  incursions  made  upon  me  by  a 
Pre-Raphaelite  poetess,  Miss  Mathilde  Blind.  Miss 
Blind  was  descended  from  a  distinguished  family  of 
revolutionaries.  Indeed,  one  of  the  brothers  at- 
tempted to  assassinate  Bismarck,  and  disappeared, 
without  any  trace  of  him  ever  again  being  heard  of, 
in  the  dungeons  of  a  Prussian  fortress.  She  was, 
moreover,  a  favorite  pupil  of  Mazzini,  the  liberator 
of  Italy,  and  a  person  in  her  earlier  years  of  extreme 
beauty  and  fire.  Upon  the  death  of  their  son  and  the 

56 


GLOOM    AND    THE    POETS 

marriage  of  their  two  daughters,  the  late  Mrs.  William 
Rossetti  and  Mrs.  Francis  Hueffer,  the  Madox  Browns 
adopted  Mathilde  Blind,  who  from  thenceforward 
spent  most  of  her  time  with  them.  As  a  boy — I  wrote 
my  first  book  when  I  was  sixteen,  and  its  success,  alas! 
was  more  tremendous  than  any  that  I  can  ever  again 
know — I  would  be  sitting  in  my  little  study  intent 
either  upon  my  writing  or  my  school  tasks,  when 
ominous  sounds  would  be  heard  at  the  door.  Miss 
Blind,  with  her  magnificent  aquiline  features  and  fine 
gray  hair,  would  enter  with  her  alarming  slip-proofs 
dangling  from  both  her  hands.  "Fordie,"  she  would 
say,  "I  want  a  synonym  for  'dun/''  On  page  152 
of  her  then  volume  of  poems  she  would  have  written 
of  dun  cows  standing  in  green  streams.  She  was  then 
correcting  the  proofs  of  page  154,  to  find  that  she  had 
spoken  of  the  dun  cows  returning  homeward  over  the 
leas.  Some  other  adjective  would  have  to  be  found 
for  this  useful  quadruped.  Then  my  bad  quarter  of 
an  hour  would  commence.  I  would  suggest  "straw- 
berry-colored," and  she  would  say  that  that  would  not 
fit  the  metre.  I  would  try  "roan,"  but  she  would  say 
that  that  would  spoil  the  phonetic  syzygy.  I  did  not 
know  what  that  was,  but  I  would  next  suggest  "heif- 
ers," whereupon  she  would  say  that  heifers  did  not 
give  milk  and  that,  anyhow,  the  accentuation  was 
wrong.  I  would  be  reduced  to  a  miserable  muteness. 
Miss  Blind  frightened  me  out  of  my  life.  And  rising 
up  and  gathering  her  proof-sheets  together,  the  poet- 

57 


MEMORIES    AND  IMPRESSIONS 

ess,  with  her  Medusa  head,  would  regard  me  with 
indignant  and  piercing  brown  eyes.  "Fordie,"  she 
would  say  with  an  awful  scrutiny,  "your  grandfather 
says  you  are  a  genius,  but  I  have  never  been  able  to 
discover  in  you  any  signs  but  those  of  your  being  as 
stupid  as  a  donkey."  I  never  could  escape  from  being 
likened  to  that  other  useful  quadruped. 

They  took  themselves  with  such  extreme  serious- 
ness— these  Pre-Raphaelite  poets — and  nevertheless 
I  have  always  fancied  that  they  are  responsible  for  the 
death  of  English  poetry.  My  father  once  wrote  of 
Rossetti  that  he  put  down  the  thoughts  of  Dante  in 
the  language  of  Shakespeare;  and  the  words  seem  to 
me  to  be  extremely  true  and  extremely  damning.  For 
what  is  wanted  of  a  poet  is  that  he  should  express  his 
own  thoughts  in  the  language  of  his  own  time.  This, 
with  perhaps  the  solitary  exception  of  Christina  Ros- 
setti, the  Pre-Raphaelite  poets  never  thought  of. 

I  remember  once  hearing  Stephen  Crane,  the  au- 
thor of  The  Red  Badge  of  Courage  and  of  The  Open 
Boat,  which  is  the  finest  volume  of  true  short  stories 
in  the  English  language — I  remember  hearing  him, 
with  his  wonderful  eyes  flashing  and  his  extreme  vigor 
and  intonation,  comment  upon  a  sentence  of  Robert 
Louis  Stevenson  that  he  was  reading.  The  sentence 
was:  "With  interjected  finger  he  delayed  the  motion 
of  the  timepiece."  "By  God,  poor  dear!"  Crane 
exclaimed.  "That  man  put  back  the  clock  of  English 
fiction  fifty  years."  I  do  not  know  that  this  is  exactly 

58 


GLOOM   AND   THE    POETS 

what  Stevenson  did  do.  I  should  say  myself  that  the 
art  of  writing  in  English  received  the  numbing  blow 
of  a  sandbag  when  Rossetti  wrote  at  the  age  of  eigh- 
teen The  Blessed  Damozel.  From  that  time  forward 
and  until  to-day — and  for  how  many  years  to  come ! — 
the  idea  has  been  inherent  in  the  mind  of  the  English 
writer  that  writing  was  a  matter  of  digging  for  obsolete 
words  with  which  to  express  ideas  forever  dead  and 
gone.  Stevenson  did  this,  of  course,  as  carefully  as 
any  Pre-Raphaelite,  though  instead  of  going  to 
mediaeval  books  he  ransacked  the  seventeenth  century. 
But  this  tendency  is  unfortunately  not  limited  to 
authors  misusing  our  very  excellent  tongue.  The 
other  day  I  was  listening  to  an  excellent  Italian  con- 
ferencier  who  assured  an  impressed  audience  that 
Signor  d'Annuncio  is  the  greatest  Italian  stylist  there 
has  ever  been,  since  in  his  last  book  he  has  used  over 
2,017  obsolete  words  which  cannot  be  understood  by 
a  modern  Italian  without  the  help  of  a  mediaeval 
glossary. 


IV 

CHRISTINA    ROSSETTI    AND    PRE-RAPHAELITE    LOVE 

IT  always  appears  to  me  that,  whereas  D.  G. 
Rossetti  belongs  to  a  comparatively  early  period 
of  nineteenth  -  century  literature,  Christina's  was  a 
much  more  modern  figure.  Dates,  perhaps,  do  not 
bear  me  out  in  this.  Rossetti  was  born  in  the  twenties, 
printed  his  first  poem  when  he  was  perhaps  ten,  and 
wrote  The  Blessed  Damozel  when  he  was  eighteen. 
On  the  other  hand,  his  first  published  volume  of 
original  poetry  did  not  appear  until  the  late  seventies. 
Yet  he  died  in  the  eighties.  Christina  Rossetti's 
Goblin  Market  volume  was  published  in  the  late 
sixties,  but  she  lived  well  on  into  the  nineties,  and  she 
wrote  poems  until  practically  the  day  of  her  death. 
I  am  perhaps  eccentric  when  I  say  that  I  consider 
Christina  Rossetti  to  be  the  greatest  master  of  words 
— at  least  of  English  words — that  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury gave  us.  Her  verse  at  its  best  is  as  clean  in  texture 
and  as  perfect  in  the  choice  of  epithet  as  any  of  Mau- 
passant's short  stories.  And  although  the  range  of 
her  subjects  was  limited — although  it  was  limited  very 
strictly  within  the  bounds  of  her  personal  emotions— 

60 


CHRISTINA    ROSSETTI 

yet  within  those  limits  she  expressed  herself  con- 
summately. And  it  was  in  this  rather  more  than  by 
her  dates  of  publication  that  she  proved  herself  a  poet 
more  modern  than  her  brother,  who  in  his  day  bulked 
so  much  more  largely  in  the  public  eye.  It  was  per- 
haps for  this  reason  too  that  Mr.  Ruskin — and  in 
this  alone  he  would  have  earned  for  himself  my 
lasting  dislike — that  Mr.  Ruskin  pooh-poohed  and 
discouraged  Christina  Rossetti's  efforts  at  poetry. 
For  there  is  extant  at  least  one  letter  from  the  volu- 
minous critic  in  which  he  declares  that  the  Goblin 
Market  volume  was  too  slight  and  too  frivolous  a 
fascicule  to  publish,  and  to  the  end  of  his  days  Mr. 
Ruskin  considered  that  Christina  damaged  her  brother. 
It  was  not  good  for  Gabriel's  fame  or  market,  he 
considered,  that  there  should  be  another  Rossetti  in 
the  field.  And  I  must  confess  that  when  I  consider 
these  utterances  and  this  attitude  I  am  filled  with 
as  hot  and  as  uncontrollable  an  anger  as  I  am  when 
faced  by  some  more  than  usually  imbecile  argument 
against  the  cause  of  women's  franchise.  Yesterday  I 
was  arguing  upon  this  latter  subject  with  a  distin- 
guished ornament  of  the  London  Stipendiary  Bench. 
Said  the  police  magistrate:  "No  woman  ever  admin- 
istered financial  interests,  ever  reigned,  or  ever  fought." 
I  mentioned  with  a  quite  feigned  humility,  and  with 
apologies  for  the  antiquated  nature  of  my  illustra- 
tions, the  prioresses  and  mothers  superior  who,  with 
never  questioned  financial  abilities,  had  administered 

61 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

and  do  administer  the  innumerable  convents,  schools, 
almshouses,  hospitals,  and  penitentiaries  of  Catholic 
Christendom.  His  Worship  mentioned  with  a  snigger 

Soeur  C ,  of  Paris,  who  obtained  fraudulent  credit 

from  jewellers  in  order  to  support  almshouses. 
Thus  with  one  sneer  and  the  mention  of  a  lady  who 

was  not  a  nun  at  all  Mr.  considered  himself  to 

have  demolished  the  claims  to  consideration  of  all 
Catholic  womanhood.  I  said  that  his  argument 
reminded  me  of  a  Park  orator  whom  I  remembered 
claiming  to  demolish  the  whole  historical  and  social 
record  of  the  Church  of  England  by  citing  the  name 
of  one  Herring,  a  sham  clergyman  who  had  extorted 
contributions  from  the  charitable  in  favor  of  a  fraud- 
ulent almshouse,  and  I  mentioned  Joan  of  Arc. 
The  legal  luminary  remarked  that  he  never  had  liked 
her,  and  when  I  produced  Queen  Elizabeth  and 
Queen  Victoria  as  arguments  in  favor  of  the  fact 
that  a  country  might  enormously  extend  its  bounds 
and  enormously  flourish  while  a  queen  reigned,  my 
superior  interlocutor  remarked  that  Victoria  was  a 
horrid  old  woman,  and  that  Elizabeth  ought  to  have 
been  a  man. 

I  do  not  say  that  my  friend's  methods  of  argument 
made  me  angry,  since  they  gave  me  the  chance  of 
roasting  him  alive  before  an  able  and  distinguished 
assembly;  but  I  could  not  help  being  reminded  by 
him  of  Mr.  Ruskin's  attitude  toward  Christina 
Rossetti.  It  was  the  same  fine  superiority  as  made 

62 


CHRISTINA    ROSSETTI 

the  police  magistrate  embrace  St.  Catharine  of  Siena, 
Joan  of  Arc,  and  Queen  Elizabeth  in  one  common 
sneer.  But,  after  all,  Queen  Elizabeth  and  the  other 
two  could  look  after  themselves.  Did  not  one  St. 
Catharine  confute  forty  thousand  doctors,  among 
whom  were  nine  hundred  and  sixty  police  magis- 
trates, and  did  she  not  in  heaven  decide  the  ticklish 
case  as  to  whether  penguins,  when  they  had  been 
baptized,  must  be  considered  to  possess  souls  ? 

But  Christina  Rossetti's  was  a  figure  so  tragic,  so 
sympathetic,  and,  let  me  emphasize  it,  so  modern, 
that  I  could  wish  for  any  one  who  put  obstacles  in  her 
way — and  there  were  several — that  fate  which  was 
adjudged  the  most  terrible  of  all,  that  a  millstone 
should  be  set  about  his  neck  and  that  he  should  be 
cast  into  the  deep  sea.  And,  indeed,  it  would  seem 
that  Mr.  Ruskin  had  fallen  into  a  deep,  a  very  deep,  a 
bottomless  sea  of  oblivion  with,  around  his  neck,  all 
his  heavy  volumes  for  a  millstone.  (I  am  at  this 
moment  corrected  in  this  exaggerated  statement,  for 
I  am  informed  that  you  will  always  find  Sesame  and 
Lilies  in  every  library  catalogue.)  And,  indeed,  I 
am  no  doubt  unduly  hard  upon  Mr.  Ruskin,  little 
though  his  eloquent  ghost  may  mind  it.  For  the  fact 
is  that  Ruskin  and  the  Pre-Raphaelites  whom  he 
heralded  so  splendidly  and  so  picturesquely  survived 
— that  these  men  marked  the  close  of  an  era.  Ruskin 
was  engaged  in  setting  the  seal  on  a  pot.  Christina 
Rossetti  was,  if  not  a  genie  in  the  form  of  a  cloud  of 

63 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

smoke,  at  least  a  subtle  essence  that  was  bound  not 
only  to  escape  his  embalming,  but  to  survive  him. 

Ruskin  pooh-poohed  her  because  she  was  not  im- 
portant. And  I  fancy  he  disliked  her  intuitively  be- 
cause importance  was  the  last  thing  in  this  world  that 
she  would  have  desired.  I  remember  informing  her 
shortly  after  the  death  of  Lord  Tennyson  that  there 
was  a  very  strong  movement,  or  at  any  rate  a  very 
strong  feeling  abroad,  that  the  Laureateship  should  be 
conferred  upon  her.  She  shuddered.  And  I  think 
that  she  gave  evidence  then  to  as  strong  an  emotion  as 
I  ever  knew  in  her.  The  idea  of  such  a  position  of 
eminence  filled  her  with  real  horror.  She  wanted  to 
be  obscure,  and  to  be  an  obscure  handmaiden  of  the 
Lord,  as  fervently  as  she  desired  to  be  exactly  correct 
in  her  language.  Exaggerations  really  pained  her.  I 
remember  that  when  I  told  her  that  I  had  met  hun- 
dreds of  people  who  thought  the  appointment  would 
be  most  appropriate,  she  pinned  me  down  until  she 
had  extracted  from  me  the  confession  that  not  more 
than  nine  persons  had  spoken  to  me  on  the  subject. 
And  a  letter  of  hers  which  I  possess,  acknowledging 
the  receipt  of  my  first  book,  begins:  "My  dear  young 
relation  (if  you  will  permit  me  to  style  you  so,  though 
I  am  aware  that  I  should  write  more  justly  'connec- 
tion.' Yet  you  are  now  too  old  for  me  to  call  you 
'Fordie')  .  .  ." 

And  there  we  have  one  symptom  of  the  gulf  that 
separated  Christina  Rossetti  as  a  Modernist  from 

64 


JOHN       RUSKIN 


CHRISTINA    ROSSETTI 

Ruskin  and  the  old  Pre-Raphaelite  Circle.  The  very 
last  thing  that  these,  the  last  of  the  Romanticists,  de- 
sired was  precision.  On  one  page  of  one  of  Mr. 
Ruskin's  books  I  have  counted  the  epithet  " golden" 
six  times.  There  are  "golden  days,"  "golden- 
mouthed,"  "distant  golden  spire,"  "golden  peaks," 
and  "golden  sunset,"  all  of  them  describing  one 
picture  by  Turner  in  which  the  nearest  approach  to 
gold  discernible  by  a  precise  eye  is  a  mixture  of  orange- 
red  and  madder-brown.  His  was  another  method;  it 
was  the  last  kick  of  Romanticism — of  that  Roman- 
ticism that  is  now  so  very  dead. 

Pre-Raphaelism  in  itself  was  born  of  Realism.  Rus- 
kin gave  it  one  white  wing  of  moral  purpose.  The 
^stheticists  presented  it  with  another,  dyed  all  the 
colors  of  the  rainbow,  from  the  hues  of  mediaeval 
tapestries  to  that  of  romantic  love.  Thus  it  flew 
rather  unevenly  and  came  to  the  ground.  The 
first  Pre-Raphaelites  said  that  you  must  paint  your 
model  exactly  as  you  see  it,  hair  for  hair,  or  leaf-spore 
for  leaf-spore.  Mr.  Ruskin  gave  them  the  added 
canon  that  the  subject  they  painted  must  be  one  of 
moral  distinction.  You  must,  in  fact,  paint  life  as 
you  see  it,  and  yet  in  such  a  way  as  to  prove  that  life 
is  an  ennobling  thing.  How  one  was  to  do  this  one 
got  no  particular  directions.  Perhaps  one  might 
have  obtained  it  by  living  only  in  the  drawing-room  of 
Brantwood  House,  Coniston,  when  Mr.  Ruskin  was  in 
residence. 

65 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

I  do  not  know  that  in  her  drawing-room  in  the 
gloomy  London  square  Christina  Rossetti  found  life 
in  any  way  ennobling  or  inspiring.  She  must  have 
found  it,  if  not  exceedingly  tragic,  at  least  so  full  of 
pain  as  to  be  almost  beyond  supporting.  Her  poetry 
is  very  full  of  a  desire,  of  a  passionate  yearning  for 
the  country,  yet  there  in  box-like  rooms  she  lived, 
her  windows  brushed  by  the  leaves,  her  rooms  rendered 
dark  by  the  shade  of  those  black-trunked  London 
trees  that  are  like  a  grim  mockery  of  their  green-boled 
sisters  of  the  open  country.  I  do  not  know  why  she 
should  have  resided  in  a  London  square.  There  were 
no  material  circumstances  that  forced  it  on  her,  but 
rather  the  psychological  cravings  of  her  inner  life. 
And,  again,  her  poetry  is  very  full  of  a  love,  of  a  desire, 
of  a  passionate  yearning  for  love.  Yet  there  in  her 
cloistral  seclusion  she  lived  alone  in  pain,  practising 
acts  of  charity  and  piety,  and  seeking  almost  as 
remorselessly  as  did  Flaubert  himself,  and  just  as 
solitarily,  for  correct  expression — for  that,  that  is  to 
say,  which  was  her  duty  in  life.  As  I  have  pointed 
out  elsewhere,  this  black-robed  figure,  with  eyes 
rendered  large  by  one  of  the  most  painful  of  diseases 
and  suffering  always  from  the  knife-stabs  of  yet  two 
other  most  painful  diseases — this  black-robed  figure, 
with  the  clear-cut  and  olive-colored  features,  the  dark 
hair,  the  restrained  and  formal  gestures,  the  hands 
always  folded  in  the  lap,  the  head  always  judicially 
a  little  on  one  side,  and  with  the  precise  enuncia- 

66 


CHRISTINA   ROSSETTI  

tion,  this  tranquil  Religious  was  undergoing  with- 
in herself  always  a  fierce  struggle  between  the  pagan 
desire  for  life,  the  light  of  the  sun  and  love,  and  an 
asceticism  that,  in  its  almost  more  than  Calvinistic 
restraint,  reached  also  to  a  point  of  frenzy.  She  put 
love  from  her  with  both  hands  and  yearned  for  it 
unceasingly;  she  let  life  pass  by  and  wrote  of  glowing 
tapestries,  of  wine  and  pomegranates;  she  was  think- 
ing always  of  heaths,  the  wide  sands  of  the  seashore, 
of  south  walls  on  which  the  apricots  glow,  and  she 
lived  always  of  her  own  free  will  in  the  gloom  of  a 
London  square.  So  that  if  Christianity  have  its 
saints  and  martyrs,  I  am  not  certain  that  she  was 
not  one  of  the  most  distinguished  of  them.  For 
there  have  been  ascetics,  but  there  can  have  been 
few  who  could  have  better  enjoyed  a  higher  life  of 
the  senses.  She  was  at  the  very  opposite  end  of  the 
hagaeological  scale  from  St.  Louis  Gonzaga,  of  whom 
it  is  recorded  that  he  was  so  chaste  that  he  had 
never  raised  his  eyes  to  look  upon  a  woman,  not  even 
upon  his  mother.  Her  last  harrowing  thoughts  upon 
her  racked  deathbed  were  that  she  had  not  sufficiently 
denied  herself,  that  she  had  not  worked  sufficiently 
in  the  olive-garden  of  the  Saviour,  that  she  had 
merited,  and  without  the  right  of  complaint  she  had 
insured,  an  eternal  damnation.  It  was  a  terrible 
thought  to  go  down  to  Death  with,  and  it  has  always 
seemed  to  me  to  be  a  condemnation  of  Christianity 
that  it  should  have  let  such  a  fate  harass  such  a  woman, 

6? 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

just  as  perhaps  it  is  one  of  the  greatest  testimonies 
to  the  powers  of  discipline  of  Christianity  that  it 
should  have  trained  up  such  a  woman  to  such  a  life 
of  abnegation,  of  splendid  literary  expression,  and  of 
meticulous  attention  to  duty.  The  trouble  was,  of 
course,  that  whereas  by  blood  and  by  nature  Christina 
Rossetti  was  a  Catholic,  by  upbringing  and  by  all 
the  influences  that  were  around  her  she  was  forced 
into  the  Protestant  communion.  Under  the  influence 
of  a  wise  confessor  the  morbidities  of  her  self-abnega- 
tion would  have  been  checked,  her  doubts  would  have 
been  stilled  with  an  authoritative  "yes"  or  "no," 
and  though  such  sins  as  she  may  have  sinned  might 
have  led  her  to  consider  that  she  had  earned  a  more  or 
less  long  period  of  torture  in  purgatory,  she  would 
have  felt  the  comfort  of  the  thought  that  all  the 
thousands  whom  by  her  work  she  had  sustained  in 
religion  and  comforted  in  the  night — that  the  prayers 
and  conversions  of  all  those  thousands  would  have 
earned  for  her  a  remission  of  her  penalties,  and  great 
bliss  and  comfort  in  an  ultimate  heaven.  There  are, 
of  course,  Protestant  natures  as  there  are  Catholic, 
just  as  there  are  those  by  nature  agnostic  and  those 
by  nature  believing  in  every  fibre,  and  heaven  is, 
without  doubt,  wide  enough  for  us  all.  But  Christina 
Rossetti's  nature  was  mediaeval  in  the  sense  that  it 
cared  for  little  things  and  for  arbitrary  arrangements. 
In  the  same  sense  it  was  so  very  modern.  For  the 
life  of  to-day  is  more  and  more  becoming  a  life  of 

68 


CHRISTINA    ROSSETTI 

little  things.  We  are  losing  more  and  more  the  sense 
of  a  whole,  the  feeling  of  a  grand  design,  of  the  co- 
ordination of  all  Nature  in  one  great  architectonic 
scheme.  We  have  no  longer  any  time  to  look  out 
for  the  ultimate  design.  We  have  to  face  such  an 
infinite  number  of  little  things  that  we  cannot  stay  to 
arrange  them  in  our  minds,  or  to  consider  them  as 
anything  but  as  accidents,  happenings,  the  mere 
events  of  the  day.  And  if  in  outside  things  we  can 
perceive  no  design,  but  only  the  fortuitous  materialism 
of  a  bewildering  world,  we  are  thrown  more  and  more 
in  upon  ourselves  for  comprehension  of  that  which  is 
not  understandable,  and  for  analysis  of  things  of  the 
spirit.  In  this  way  we  seem  again  to  be  returning  to 
the  empiricism  of  the  Middle  Ages,  and  in  that  way, 
too,  Christina  herself,  although  she  resembled  the 
figure  of  a  mediaeval  nun,  seems  also  a  figure  very 
modern  among  all  the  romantic  generalizers  who 
surrounded  her,  who  overwhelmed  her,  who  despised 
and  outshouted  her. 

For  in  the  nineteenth  century  men  still  generalized. 
Empirical  religion  appeared  to  be  dead,  and  all  the 
functions  of  life  could  be  treated  as  manifestations 
of  a  Whole,  ordered  according  to  one  school  of 
thought  or  another.  Thus,  love,  according  to  the 
Pre-Raphaelite  canon,  was  a  great  but  rather  sloppy 
passion.  Its  manifestations  would  be  Paolo  and 
Francesca,  or  Launcelot  and  Guinevere.  It  was  a 
thing  that  you  swooned  about  on  broad,  general  lines, 

69 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

your  eyes  closed,  your  arms  outstretched.  It  excused 
all  sins,  it  sanctified  all  purposes,  and  if  you  went  to 
hell  over  it  you  still  drifted  about  among  snowflakes 
of  fire  with  your  eyes  closed  and  in  the  arms  of  the 
object  of  your  passion.  For  it  is  impossible  to  suppose 
that  when  Rossetti  painted  his  picture  of  Paolo  and 
Francesca  in  hell,  he  or  any  of  his  admirers  thought 
that  these  two  lovers  were  really  suffering.  They 
were  not.  They  were  suffering  perhaps  with  the 
malaise  of  love,  which  is  always  an  uneasiness,  but  an 
uneasiness  how  sweet!  And  the  flakes  of  flames  were 
descending  all  over  the  rest  of  the  picture,  but  they 
did  not  fall  upon  Paolo  and  Francesca.  No,  the 
lovers  were  protected  by  a  generalized  swooning 
passion  that  formed,  as  it  were,  a  moral  and  very 
efficient  mackintosh  all  over  them.  And  no  doubt 
what  D.  G.  Rossetti  and  his  school  thought  was  that, 
although  guilty  lovers  have  to  go  to  hell  for  the  sake 
of  the  story,  they  will  find  hell  pleasant  enough, 
because  the  aroma  of  their  passion,  the  wings  of  the 
great  god  of  love,  and  the  swooning  intensity  of  it  all 
will  render  them  insensible  to  the  inconveniences  of 
their  lodgings.  As  much  as  to  say  that  you  do  not 
mind  the  bad  cooking  of  the  Brighton  Hotel  if  you  are 
having  otherwise  a  good  time  of  it. 

But  with  its  glamour,  its  swooning,  its  ecstasies, 
and  its  all-embracing  justification,  the  Pre-Raphaelite 
view  of  mediaeval  love  was  a  very  different  thing 
from  real  medievalism.  That  was  a  state  of  things 

70 


CHRISTINA    ROSSETTI 

much  more  like  our  own.  Mediaeval  people  took 
,  their  own  individual  cases  on  their  own  individual 
merits,  and  guilty  love  exacted  some  kind  of  ret- 
ribution very  frequently  painful,  as  often  as  not 
grotesque.  Or  sometimes  there  was  not  any  ret- 
ribution at  all  —  a  successful  intrigue  "came  off," 
and  became  material  for  a  joyous  conte.  It  was 
a  matter  of  individual  idiosyncrasies  then  as  it  is 
to-day.  You  got  roasted  in  hell,  or  an  injured  husband 
stuck  a  dagger  into  you,  or  you  were  soundly  cudgelled, 
drenched  with  water,  or  thrown  onto  noxious  dung- 
heaps,  just  as  nowadays  you  get  horsewhipped,  escape 
or  do  not  escape  the  divorce  courts,  and  do  or  do  not 
get  requested  to  resign  from  your  club.  There  was 
not  then,  as  there  is  not  now,  any  protective  glamour 
about  it.  The  things  happened,  hard,  direct,  and 
without  the  chance  of  ignoring  them.  Dante's  lovers 
in  hell  felt  bitter  cold,  stinging  flame,  shame,  horror, 
despair,  and  possibly  even  all  the  eternity  of  woe  that 
was  before  them.  And  all  the  hard,  direct,  ferocious, 
and  unrelenting  spirit  of  the  poet  went  into  the  pict- 
ure, as  into  all  his  other  pictures  of  mediaeval  after-life. 
So  it  was  with  the  Rossetti  who  dwelt  for  so  long  in 
the  same  house  as  Dante  Gabriel,  writing  her  poems  on 
the  corner  of  the  washhand-stand  in  her  bedroom,  and 
making  no  mark  at  all  in  the  household,  while  all  the 
other  great  figures  spouted  and  generalized  about  love 
and  the  musical  glasses  in  every  other  room  of  the 
gloomy  and  surely  glamourous  houses  that  in  Blooms- 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

bury  the  Rossettis  successively  inhabited.  They 
talked  and  generalized  about  life  and  love,  and  they 
pursued  their  romantic  images  along  the  lines  of  least 
resistance.  They  got  into  scrapes  or  they  did  not, 
they  squabbled  or  they  made  it  up;  but  they  always 
worked  out  a  moral  theory  good  enough  to  justify 
themselves  and  to  impress  the  rest  of  the  world. 

And  that  in  essence  was  the  note  of  the  Victorian 
great.  It  did  not  matter  what  they  did,  whether  it 
was  George  Eliot  living  in  what  we  should  call  to- 
day "open  sin,"  or  Schopenhauer  trying  to  have 
all  noises  suppressed  by  law  because  they  interrupted 
his  cogitations.  No  matter  what  their  personal  eccen- 
tricities or  peccadilloes  might  be,  they  were  always 
along  the  lines  of  the  higher  morality.  I  am  not  saying 
that  such  figures  are  not  to  be  found  to-day.  If  you 
will  read  the  works  of  Mr.  —  -  you  will  find  the 
attitude  of  the  Victorian  Great  Man  exactly  repro- 
duced. For  whatever  this  gentleman  may  desire  to 
do  in  a  moment  of  impulse  or  of  irritation,  or  in  the 
search  for  copy  or  in  the  quest  for  health,  at  once 
he  will  write  a  great  big  book  to  prove  that  this, 
his  eccentricity,  ought,  according  to  the  higher  morals, 
to  be  the  rule  of  life  for  the  British  middle-classes. 
And  there  are  ten  or  twenty  of  such  gentlemen 
nowadays  occupied  in  so  directing  our  lives,  and 
waxing  moderately  fat  upon  the  profits  of  their 
spiritual  dictatorships,  but  they  have  not  anything 
like  the  ascendancy  of  their  predecessors.  We  have 

72 


CHRISTINA    ROSSETTI 

not  any  longer  our  Ruskins,  Carlyles,  George  Eliots, 
and  the  rest.  We  have  in  consequence  very  much 
more  to  work  out  our  special  cases  for  ourselves,  and 
we  are  probably  a  great  deal  more  honest  in  conse- 
quence. We  either  do  our  duties  and  have  very  bad 
times,  with  good  consciences,  or  we  do  not  do  our 
duties  and  enjoy  ourselves  with  occasional  pauses  for 
unpleasant  reflections.  But  we  look,  upon  the  whole, 
in  our  little  unimportantly  individual  ways,  honestly 
at  our  special  cases.  The  influence  of  Jean  Jacques 
Rousseau,  in  fact,  is  on  the  wane,  and  the  gentleman 
to-day  who  left  his  illegitimate  children  on  the  steps 
of  a  foundling  hospital  would  think  himself  rather  a 
dirty  dog,  and  try  to  forget  the  incident. 

And  this,  as  much  as  her  closed  bedroom  door, 
separated  Christina  Rossetti  from  the  other  artists 
and  poets  and  critics  and  social  reformers  that  fre- 
quented her  father's  house.  She  was  not  influenced 
by  Rousseauism  at  all.  She  took  her  life  and  her  love 
unflinchingly  in  hand,  and  how  very  painfully  she 
proceeded  along  the  straight  path  of  duty! 

"Does  the  road  wind  up-hill  all  the  way? 

Yea,  to  the  very  end. 

Will  the  day's  journey  last  the  whole  long  day  ? 
From  dawn  to  night,  my  friend." 

So  writing  in  her  early  youth  she  forecasted  her 
life.  The  record  is  an  insensate  one;  still,  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  man  who  said  that  to  make  a 

73 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

good  job  of  a  given  task  is  the  highest  thing  in  life, 
then  surely  Christina  Rossetti  achieved  the  very  high- 
est of  high  things.  There  is  no  anchorite  who  so 
denied  himself  and  no  Simeon  upon  his  pillar. 
Of  course,  if  we  speak  about  the  uselessness  of 
sacrifice.  .  .  . 

In  the  beginning,  even  from  that  point  of  view,  the 
poetess  was  somewhat  badly  used.  She  bestowed  her 
affections  and  became  engaged  to  a  poor  specimen  of 
humanity,  one  of  the  seven  Pre-Raphaelite  brethren, 
and,  like  herself,  a  member  of  the  Church  of  England. 
Shortly  after  the  engagement  this  gentleman's  spiritual 
vicissitudes  forced  him  to  become  a  Roman  Catholic. 
Christina  put  up  with  the  change,  though  it  grieved 
her.  She  consented  to  remain  engaged  to  him,  for 
was  not  her  father  at  least  nominally  Catholic  and  her 
mother  Protestant  ?  But  no  sooner  had  she  adjusted 
herself  to  the  changed  conditions  than  her  lover  once 
more  reverted  to  Anglicanism.  I  am  not  certain  how 
many  religions  he  essayed.  But  certainly  there  came 
a  point  when  the  poetess,  whose  religion  was  the  main 
point  of  her  life,  cried  that  it  was  enough.  The  break- 
ing off  of  her  engagement  was  a  very  severe  blow  and 
tinged  her  life  and  work  with  melancholy.  Later 
she  became  engaged  to  a  very  charming  man  of  a 
mild  humor,  great  gifts,  a  touching  absence  of  mind, 
and  much  gentleness  of  spirit.  This  was  Cayley, 
the  translator  of  Homer,  and  the  brother  of  the  great 
mathematician.  But  Cayley  himself  offered  one  very 

74 


CHRISTINA      G.     ROSSETTI 

FROM     A     PICTURE     BY     DANTE     GABRIEL     ROSSETTI 


CHRISTINA    ROSSETTI 

serious  obstacle.  He  was  an  agnostic,  and,  in  spite  of 
Christina's  arguments  and  remonstrances,  he  remained 
an  agnostic.  She  found  it  therefore  to  be  her  duty 
not  to  marry  him,  and  they  remained  apart  to  the  end 
of  their  lives.  And  I  think  that  the  correspondence 
of  this  essentially  good  and  gentle  man  and  this  nun- 
like  and  saintly  woman  is  one  of  the  most  touching 
products  that  we  have  of  human  love  and  abstention. 
As  love-letters  theirs  are  all  the  more  touching  in 
that  no  note  at  all  of  passion  is  sounded.  The  lover 
presents  the  poetess  with  the  sea -mouse,  a  spiny 
creature  like  an  iridescent  slug,  and  the  poetess  writes 
a  poem  to  her  mouse  and  chronicles  its  fate  and  for- 
tunes, and  they  write  about  the  weather  and  their 
households  and  all  such  things — little,  quaint,  humor- 
ous, and  not  at  all  pathetic  letters  such  as  might  have 
passed  between  Abelard  and  Heloise  if  those  earlier 
Christians  had  been  gifted  with  senses  of  humor,  de- 
cency, and  renunciation.  So  that  the  figure  of  Chris- 
tina Rossetti  remains  mediaeval  or  modern,  but  always 
nun-like.  And,  since  she  suffered  nearly  always  from 
intense  physical  pain  and  much  isolation,  there  was 
little  wonder  that  her  poems  were  almost  altogether 
introspective — just,  indeed,  as  all  modern  poetry  is  al- 
most altogether  introspective.  I  remember  being  in- 
tensely shocked  at  reading  in  the  Dictionary  of  Nation- 
al Biography  that  Doctor  Garnett,  himself  one  of  the 
quaintest,  most  picturesque,  and  most  lovable  of  the 
later  figures  of  English  literary  life — that  Doctor 
6  75 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

Garnett  considered  Christina  Rossetti's  poetry  to  be 
uniformly  morbid.  I  was  so  distressed  by  this  dis- 
covery that — though  I  suppose  it  was  no  affair  of 
mine — I  hurried  to  the  principal  librarian's  book- 
hidden  study  in  the  British  Museum,  and  I  remon- 
strated even  with  some  agitation  against  the  epithet 
he  had  selected.  Doctor  Garnett,  however,  was  ex- 
ceedingly impenitent.  With  his  amiable  and  obstinate 
smile  and  his  odd,  caressing  gestures  of  the  hand,  he 
insisted  that  the  word  "morbid"  as  applied  to  liter- 
ature signified  that  which  was  written  by  a  person 
suffering  from  disease.  I  insisted  that  it  meant  such 
writing  as  was  calculated  to  disease  the  mind  of  the 
reader,  but  we  got  no  further  than  the  statement  of 
our  respective  opinions  several  times  repeated.  Doc- 
tor Garnett,  surely  the  most  erudite  man  as  far 
as  books  were  concerned  in  the  world  of  his  day, 
was  also  a  gentleman  of  strong  and  unshakable  opin- 
ions, apparently  of  the  Tory  and  High  Church,  but 
at  any  rate  of  the  official  type.  I  remember  being 
present  at  an  impressive  argument  between  this 
scholar  and  another  member  of  the  Rossetti  family. 
It  concerned  the  retention  by  Great  Britain  of  Egypt, 
and  it  ran  like  this: 

Said  Mr.  R :  "My  dear  Garnett,  the  retention 

by  Great  Britain  of  the  Egyptian  Territory  is  a  sin  and 
a  shame,  and  the  sooner  we  evacuate  it  the  sooner 
our  disgrace  will  come  to  an  end." 

Said  Doctor  Garnett:  "My  dear  R ,  but  if 

76 


CHRISTINA    ROSSETTI 

we  evacuated  Egypt  we  should  lose  the  Empire  of 
India." 

Said  Mr.  R :  "My  dear  Garnett,  the  retention 

by  Great  Britain  of  the  Egyptian  Territory  is  a  sin 
and  a  shame,  and  the  sooner  we  evacuate  it  the  sooner 
our  disgrace  will  come  to  an  end." 

Said  Doctor  Garnett:  "My  dear  R ,  but  if  we 

evacuated  Egypt  we  should  lose  the  Empire  of  India." 

Said  Mr.  R :  "My  dear  Garnett,  the  retention 

by  Great  Britain  .  .  .  ' 

So  this  instructive  discussion  continued  for  I  cannot 
say  how  long.  It  reminded  me  of  the  problem: 
"What  would  happen  if  an  irresistible  force  came 
against  an  immovable  post  ?"  The  words  of  both 
gentlemen  were  uttered  without  any  raising  of  the 
voice  or  without  engendering  the  least  heat.  But  at 
last  one  of  my  cousins  ended  the  discussion  by  letting 
loose  in  the  room  a  tame  owl,  and  the  conversation 
passed  into  other  channels. 


MUSIC   AND   MASTERS 

WHEN  I  was  a  very  small  boy  indeed  I  was  taken 
to  a  concert.  In  those  days,  as  a  token  of  my 
Pre-Raphaelite  origin,  I  wore  very  long  golden  hair, 
a  suit  of  greenish-yellow  corduroy  velveteen  with  gold 
buttons,  and  two  stockings,  of  which  the  one  was  red 
and  the  other  green.  These  garments  were  the  curse 
of  my  young  existence  and  the  joy  of  every  street-boy 
who  saw  me.  I  was  taken  to  this  concert  by  my 
father's  assistant  on  the  Times  newspaper.  Mr. 
Rudall  was  the  most  kindly,  the  most  charming,  the 
most  gifted,  the  most  unfortunate — and  also  the  most 
absent-minded  of  men.  Thus,  when  we  had  arrived 
in  our  stalls — and  in  those  days  the  representative  of 
the  Times  always  had  the  two  middle  front  seats — 
when  we  had  arrived  in  our  stalls  Mr.  Rudall  dis- 
covered that  he  had  omitted  to  put  on  his  necktie 
that  day.  He  at  once  went  out  to  purchase  one  and, 
having  become  engrossed  in  the  selection,  he  forgot 
all  about  the  concert,  went  away  to  the  Thatched 
House  Club,  and  passed  there  the  remainder  of  the 
evening.  I  was  left,  in  the  middle  of  the  front  row, 

78 


MUSIC   AND    MASTERS 

all  alone  and  feeling  very  tiny  and  deserted — the  sole 
representative  of  the  august  organ  that  in  those  days 
was  known  as  "  The  Thunderer." 

Immediately  in  front  of  me,  standing  in  the  vacant 
space  before  the  platform,  which  was  all  draped  in 
red,  there  were  three  gilt  arm-chairs  and  a  gilt  table. 
In  the  hall  there  was  a  great  and  continuing  rustle 
of  excitement.  Then  suddenly  this  became  an  enor- 
mous sound  of  applause.  It  volleyed  and  rolled  round 
and  round  the  immense  space;  I  had  never  heard 
such  sound,  and  I  have  never  again  heard  such  another. 
Then  I  perceived  that  from  beneath  the  shadow  of 
the  passage  that  led  into  the  artists'  room — in  the 
deep  shadow — there  had  appeared  a  silver  head,  a 
dark-brown  face,  hook-nosed,  smiling  the  enigmatic 
Jesuit's  smile,  the  long  locks  falling  backward  so  that 
the  whole  shape  of  the  apparition  was  that  of  the 
Sphinx  head.  Behind  this  figure  came  two  others 
that  excited  no  proportionate  attention,  but,  small 
as  I  then  was,  I  recognized  in  them  the  late  King 
and  the  present  Queen  Mother. 

They  came  closer  and  closer  to  me;  they  stood  in 
front  of  the  three  gilt  arm-chairs;  the  deafening 
applause  continued.  The  old  man  with  the  terrible 
enigmatic  face  made  gestures  of  modesty.  He  refused, 
smiling  all  the  time,  to  sit  in  one  of  the  gilt  arm- 
chairs. And  suddenly  he  bowed  down  upon  me. 
He  stretched  out  his  hands;  he  lifted  me  out  of  my 
seat,  he  sat  down  in  it  himself  and  left  me  standing, 

79 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

the  very  small,  lonely  child  with  the  long  golden  curls, 
underneath  all  those  eyes  and  stupefied  by  the  immense 
sounds  of  applause. 

The  King  sent  an  equerry  to  entreat  the  Master 
to  come  to  his  seat;  the  Master  sat  firmly  planted 
there,  smiling  obstinately.  Then  the  Queen  came 
and  took  him  by  the  hand.  She  pulled  him — I  don't 
know  how  much  strength  she  needed — right  out  of 
his  seat  and — to  prevent  his  returning  to  it  she  sat 
down  there.  After  all  it  was  my  seat.  And  then, 
as  if  she  realized  my  littleness  and  my  loneliness,  she 
drew  me  to  her  and  sat  me  on  her  knee.  It  was  a 
gracious  act. 

There  is  a  passage  in  Pepy's  Diary  in  which  he 
records  that  he  was  present  at  some  excavations  in 
Westminster  Abbey  when  they  came  upon  the  skull  of 
Jane  Seymour,  and  he  kissed  the  skull  on  the  place  where 
once  the  lips  had  been.  And  in  his  Diary  he  records: 
"It  was  on  such  and  such  a  day  of  such  and  such  a 
year  that  I  did  kiss  a  Queen,"  and  then,  his  feelings 
overcoming  him,  he  repeats:  "It  was  on  such  and 
such  a  day  of  such  and  such  a  year  that  I  did  kiss  a 
Queen."  I  have  forgotten  what  was  the  date  when  I 
sat  in  a  Queen's  lap.  But  I  remember  very  well  that 
when  I  came  out  into  Piccadilly  the  cabmen,  with  their 
three-tiered  coats,  were  climbing  up  the  lamp-posts 
and  shouting  out:  'Three  cheers  for  the  Habby 
Liszt!"  And,  indeed,  the  magnetic  personality  of 
the  Abbe  Liszt  was  incredible  in  its  powers  of  awaken- 
So 


FRANZ      LISZT 

=  ORTRAIT       PAINTED       FROM       LIFE      BY       MUNKACSY.     THROUGH       THE       COURTESY      OF 
FREDERICK       KEPPEL 


MUSIC   AND    MASTERS 

ing  enthusiasm.  A  few  days  later  my  father  took  me 
to  call  at  the  house  where  Liszt  was  staying — it  was 
at  the  Lytteltons',  I  suppose.  There  were  a  number 
of  people  in  the  drawing-room  and  they  were  all 
asking  Liszt  to  play.  Liszt  steadfastly  refused.  A 
few  days  before  he  had  had  a  slight  accident  that  had 
hurt  one  of  his  hands.  He  refused.  Suddenly  he 
turned  his  eyes  upon  me,  and  then,  bending  down, 
he  said  in  my  ear: 

"Little  boy,  I  will  play  for  you,  so  that  you  will 
be  able  to  tell  your  children's  children  that  you  have 
heard  Liszt  play." 

And  he  played  the  first  movement  of  the  "Moon- 
light Sonata."  I  do  not  remember  much  of  his  playing, 
but  I  remember  very  well  that  I  was  looking,  while 
Liszt  played,  at  a  stalwart,  florid  Englishman  who  is 
now  an  earl.  And  suddenly  I  perceived  that  tears 
were  rolling  down  his  cheeks.  And  soon  all  the 
room  was  in  tears.  It  struck  me  as  odd  that  people 
should  cry  because  Liszt  was  playing  the  "Moonlight 
Sonata." 

Ah!  that  wonderful  personality;  there  was  no  end 
to  the  enthusiasms  it  aroused.  I  had  a  distant  con- 
nection— oddly  enough  an  English  one — who  became 
by  marriage  a  lady-in-waiting  at  the  court  of  Saxe- 
Weimar.  I  met  her  a  few  years  ago,  and  she  struck 
me  as  a  typically  English  and  unemotional  personage. 
3ut  she  had  always  about  her  a  disagreeable  odor 
that  persisted  to  the  day  of  her  death.  When  they 

81 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

came  to  lay  her  out  they  discovered  that  round  her 
neck  she  wore  a  sachet,  and  in  that  sachet  there  was 
the  half  of  a  cigar  that  had  been  smoked  by  Liszt. 
Liszt  had  lunched  with  her  and  her  husband  thirty 
years  before. 

And  ah!  the  records  of  musical  enthusiasms! 
How  dead  they  are  and  how  mournful  is  the  reading 
of  them !  How  splendid  it  is  to  read  how  the  students 
of  Trinity  College,  Dublin,  took  the  horses  out  of 
Malibran's  carriage  and,  having  amid  torchlight 
drawn  her  round  and  round  the  city,  they  upset  the 
carriage  in  the  quadrangle  and  burnt  it  to  show  their 
joy.  They  also  broke  six  hundred  and  eighty  windows. 
The  passage  in  the  life  of  Malibran  always  reminds 
me  of  a  touching  sentence  in  Carlyle's  Diary: 

"To-day  on  going  out  I  observed  that  the  men  at 
the  corner  were  more  than  usually  drunk.  And  then 
I  remembered  that  it  was  the  birthday  of  their  Re- 
deemer." 

But  what  has  become  of  all  the  once-glorious  ones  ? 
When  I  was  a  boy  at  Malvern  my  grandfather  went 
about  in  a  Bath-chair  because  he  was  suffering  from 
a  bad  attack  of  gout.  Sometimes  beside  his  chair 
another  would  be  pulled  along.  It  contained  a  little 
old  lady  with  a  faint  and  piping  voice.  That  was 
Jenny  Lind. 

I  wonder  how  many  young  persons  of  twenty-five 
to-day  have  even  heard  the  name  of  Jenny  Lind  ? 
And  this  oblivion  has  always  seemed  to  me  unjust. 

82 


MUSIC    AND    MASTERS 

But  perhaps  Providence  is  not  so  unjust  after  all. 
Sometimes,  when  I  am  thinking  of  this  subject,  I 
have  a  vision.  I  see,  golden  and  far  way,  an  island 
of  the  Hesperides — somewhere  that  side  of  heaven. 
And  in  this  island  there  is  such  an  opera-house  as 
never  was.  And  in  this  opera-house  music  is  for- 
ever sounding  forth,  and  all  these  singers  are  all 
singing  together — Malibran  and  Jenny  Lind  and 
Schlehi,  and  even  Carolina  Bauer.  And  Mario  stands 
in  the  wings  smoking  his  immense  cigar  and  waiting 
for  his  time  to  go  on.  And  beside  him  stands  Cam- 
panini.  And  every  two  minutes  the  conductor  stops 
the  orchestra  so  that  twenty  bouquets,  each  as  large 
as  a  mountain,  may  be  handed  over  the  footlights  to 
each  of  the  performers. 

The  manifestation  of  the  most  virtuous  triumph 
that  was  ever  vouchsafed  me  to  witness  occurred 
when  I  was  quite  a  child.  A  prima  donnawas  calling 
upon  my  father.  She  had  been  lately  touring  round 
America  as  one  of  the  trainloads  of  prime  donne  that 
Colonel  Mapleson  was  accustomed  to  take  about 
with  him.  Mme.  B.  was  a  dark  and  fiery  lady,  and 
she  related  her  triumphant  story  somewhat  as  follows: 

"My  best  part  it  is  Dinorah — my  equal  in  the 
'Shadow  Song'  there  is  not.  Now  what  does  Colonel 
Mapleson  do  but  give  this  part  of  Dinorah  to  Mme.  C. 
Is  it  not  a  shame  ?  Is  it  not  a  disgrace  ?  She  cannot 
sing,  she  cannot  sing  for  nuts,  and  she  was  announced 
to  appear  in  'Dinorah'  for  the  whole  of  the  tour. 

83 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

The  first  time  she  was  to  sing  it  was  in  Chicago,  and 
I  say  to  myself:  'Ah!  only  wait,  you  viper,  that  has 
stolen  the  part  for  which  the  good  God  created  me!' 
Mme.  C.,  she  is  a  viper!  I  tell  you  so.  I,  Eularia  B.! 
But  I  say  she  shall  not  sing  in  '  Dinorah/  You  know 
the  parrots  of  Mme.  C.  Ugly  beasts,  they  are  the 
whole  world  for  her.  If  one  of  them  is  indisposed 
she  cannot  sing — not  one  note.  Now  the  grace  of 
God  comes  in.  On  the  very  night  when  she  was  to 
sing  in  'Dinorah'  in  Chicago  I  passed  the  open  door 
of  her  room  in  the  hotel;  and  God  sent  at  the  same 
moment  a  waiter  who  was  carrying  a  platter  of  ham 
upon  which  were  many  sprigs  of  parsley.  So  by  the 
intercession  of  the  blessed  saints  it  comes  into  my 
head  that  parsley  is  death  to  parrots.  I  seize  the 
platter  from  the  waiter" — and  Mme.  B.'s  voice  and 
manner  became  those  of  an  august  and  avenging  deity 
— "I  seize  the  platter,  I  tear  from  it  the  parsley,  I 
rush  into  the  room  of  Mme.  C.  By  the  grace  of  God 
Mme.  C.  is  absent,  and  I  throw  the  parsley  to  the  ugly 
green  fowls.  They  devour  it  with  voracity,  and  they 
die;  they  all  die.  Mme.  C.  has  fits  for  a  fortnight, 
and  I  —  I  sing  Dinorah.  I  sing  it  like  a  miracle; 
I  sing  it  like  an  angel,  and  Mme.  C.  has  never  the 
face  to  put  her  nose  on  the  stage  in  that  part  again. 
Never!" 

This  was  perhaps  the  mildest  of  the  stories  of  the 
epic  jealousies  of  musicians  with  which  my  father's 
house  re-echoed,  but  it  is  the  one  which  remains  most 

84 


MUSIC    AND    MASTERS 

vividly  in  my  mind,  I  suppose  because  of  the  poor 
parrots. 

It  was  the  dread  of  these  acrid  jealousies  that  even- 
tually drove  from  my  mind  all  hope  of  a  career  as  a 
composer.  There  was  something  so  harsh  in  some  of 
the  manifestations  that  met  me,  I  being  at  the  time 
an  innocent  and  gentle  boy,  that  I  am  filled  with  won- 
der when  I  consider  that  any  composer  ever  has  the 
strength  of  mind  to  continue  in  his  avocation  or  that 

O 

any  executant  ever  struggles  through  as  far  as  the 
concert  platform.  At  the  last  public  school  which  I 
attended — for  my  attendances  at  schools  were  varied 
and  singular,  according  as  my  father  ruined  himself 
with  starting  new  periodicals  or  happened  to  be  flush 
of  money  on  account  of  new  legacies  —  at  my  last 
public  school  I  was  permitted  to  withdraw  myself 
every  afternoon  to  attend  concerts.  This  brought 
down  upon  me  the  jeers  of  one  particular  Ger- 
man master  who  kept  order  in  the  afternoons,  and 
upon  one  occasion  he  set  for  translation  the  sen- 
tence: 

"While  I  was  idling  away  my  time  at  a  concert 
the  rest  of  my  classmates  were  diligently  engaged  in 
the  study  of  the  German  language." 

Proceeding  mechanically  with  the  translation — for  I 

paid  no  particular  attention  to  Mr.  P ,  because 

my  father,  in  his  reasonable  tones,  had  always 
taught  me  that  schoolmasters  were  men  of  inferior 
intelligence  to  whom  personally  we  should  pay  lit- 

85 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

tie  attention,  though  the  rules  for  which  they  stood 
must  be  exactly  observed  —  I  had  got  as  far  as 
"Indem  ich  faulenzte  ...  when  it  suddenly 
occurred  to  me  that  Mr.  P ,  in  setting  this  sen- 
tence to  the  class,  was  aiming  a  direct  insult  not 
only  at  myself,  but  at  Beethoven,  Bach,  Mozart, 
Wagner,  and  Robert  Franz.  An  extraordinary  and 
now  inexplicable  fury  overcame  me.  At  all  my 
schools  I  was  always  the  good  boy  of  my  respective 
classes,  but  on  this  occasion  I  rose  in  my  seat, 
propelled  by  an  irresistible  force,  and  I  addressed 

Mr.  P with  words   the   most   insulting    and    the 

most  contemptuous.  I  pointed  out  that  music  was 
the  most  divine  of  all  arts;  that  German  was  a 
language  fit  only  for  horses;  that  German  literature 
contained  nothing  that  any  sensible  person  could  want 
to  read  except  the  works  of  Schopenhauer,  who  was 
an  Anglomaniac,  and  in  any  case  was  much  better 
read  in  an  English  translation;  I  pointed  out  that 
Victor  Hugo  has  said  that  to  alter  the  lowest  type  of 
inanities,  "il  faut  etre  stupide  comme  un  maitre 
d'ecole  qui  n'est  bon  a  rien  que  pour  planter  des 
choux."  I  can  still  feel  the  extraordinary  indignation 
that  filled  me,  though  I  have  to  make  an  effort  of  the 
imagination  to  understand  why  I  was  so  excited;  I 
can  still  feel  the  way  the  breath  poured  through  my 
distended  nostrils.  With,  I  suppose,  some  idea  of 
respect  for  discipline,  I  had  carefully  spoken  in 
German,  which  none  of  my  classmates  understood. 

86 


MUSIC   AND    MASTERS 

My  harangue  was  suddenly  ended  by  Mr.   P 's 

throwing  his  large  inkpot  at  me;  it  struck  me  upon  the 

shoulder  and  ruined  my  second-best  coat  and  waistcoat. 

I   thought   really   no   more   of  the  incident.     Mr. 

P was    an    excellent   man,  with   a   red    face,  a 

bald  head,  golden  side-whiskers  and  an  apoplectic 
build  of  body.  Endowed  by  nature  with  a  temper 
more  than  volcanic,  it  was  not  unusual  for  him  to 
throw  an  inkpot  at  a  boy  who  made  an  exasperating 
mistranslation,  but  he  had  never  before  hit  anybody; 
so  that  meeting  him  afterward  in  the  corridors  I 
apologized  profusely  to  him.  He  apologized  almost 
more  profusely  to  me,  and  we  walked  home  together, 
our  routes  from  school  being  exactly  similar.  I  had 
the  greatest  difficulty  in  preventing  his  buying  me  a 
new  suit  of  clothes,  while  with  a  gentle  reproach- 
fulness  he  reproved  me  for  having  uttered  blas- 
phemies against  the  language  of  Goethe,  Schiller, 
Lessing,  and  Jean  Paul  Richter.  It  was  then  toward 
the  end  of  the  term,  and  shortly  afterward  the  head- 
master sent  for  me  and  informed  me  that  I  had  better 
not  return  to  the  school.  He  said — and  it  was  cer- 
tainly the  case — that  it  was  one  of  the  founder's  rules 
that  no  boy  engaged  in  business  could  be  permitted 
to  remain.  This  rule  was  intended  to  guard  against 
gambling  and  petty  huckstering  among  the  boys.  But 
Mr.  K said  that  he  understood  I  had  lately  pub- 
lished a  book  and  had  received  for  it  not  only  publicity 
but  payment,  the  payment  being  against  the  rules  of 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

the  school,  and  the  publicity  calculated  to  detract 
from  a  strict  spirit  of  discipline.  Mr.  K was  ex- 
ceedingly nice  and  sympathetic,  and  he  remarked 
that  in  his  day  my  uncle  Oliver  Madox  Brown  had 
had  the  reputation  of  being  the  laziest  boy  at  that 
establishment,  while  I  had  amply  carried  on  that 
splendid  tradition. 

That  was  the  last  of  my  school  days,  but  nearly 
fifteen  years  later  I  met  in  the  Strand  a  man  who  was 
an  officer  in  the  Burmese  Civil  Service.  At  school  he 
had  been  my  particular  chum.  And  he  told  me  that 

he  had  been  so  shocked  by  Mr.  P 's  throwing  the 

inkpot  at  me  that,  without  telling  anybody  about  it, 
he  had  gone  straight  to  the  headmaster  and  had 
reported  the  whole  matter.  The  headmaster  had 
taken  Mr.  P-  -  to  task  to  such  effect  that  the  poor 
man  resigned  from  the  school,  and  shortly  afterward 
died  in  Alsace  -  Lorraine.  Apparently  the  offence 
of  my  having  written  a  book  was  only  a  pretext 
for  getting  rid  of  me  from  the  school.  Mr.  P-  — ,  it 
appears,  had  reported  that  my  powers  of  invective 
were  so  considerable  that  I  must  gravely  menace  the 
authority  of  any  master.  And  yet,  from  that  day  to 
this,  and  never  before,  can  I  remember  having  ad- 
dressed a  cutting  speech  to  any  living  soul  except 
once  to  a  German  waiter  in  the  refreshment-room  of 
Frankfort  Hauptbahnhof. 

Thus  music,  or  the  enthusiasm  for  music,  put  an  end 
to  my  lay  education  in  these  islands,  and  I  entered 


MUSIC   AND    MASTERS 

upon  a  course  more  distinctly  musical.  Having 
received  instruction  from  more  or  less  sound  musi- 
cians, and  a  certain  amount  of  encouragement  from 
musicians  more  or  less  eminent,  I  attempted  the 
entrance  examination  of  one  of  the  British  royal 
institutions  for  education  in  music.  I  acquitted 
myself  reasonably  well,  or  even  exceedingly  well,  as 
far  as  the  theory  of  music  was  concerned,  but  this 
institution  has,  or  perhaps  it  was  only  that  it  had,  a 
rule  that  seemed  to  me  inscrutable  in  its  stupidity. 
Every  pupil  must  take  what  is  called  a  second  study 
— the  study  of  some  instrument  or  other.  I  had  a 
nodding  acquaintance  with  practically  every  instru- 
ment of  the  orchestra,  except  the  drums,  which  I 
could  never  begin  to  tackle.  The  principal  of  the 
institution  in  question  set  it  down  to  my  dismay  that 
my  second  study  must  be  the  piano.  Now  I  could  not 
play  the  piano;  I  dislike  the  piano,  which  seems  to  me 
to  be  the  most  soulless  of  the  instruments,  and  in  any 
case  to  acquire  mastery  of  the  piano,  or,  indeed,  of  any 
other  instrument,  requires  many  hours  of  practising  a 
day,  which  would  interfere,  as  it  seemed  to  me,  rather 
seriously  with  the  deep  study  that  I  hoped  to  make  of 
the  theory  of  music.  I  accordingly  asked  to  be 
allowed  to  interview  the  principal — an  awful  being 
who  kept  himself  splendidly  remote.  Having  suc- 
ceeded with  a  great  deal  of  difficulty  in  penetrating 
into  his  room,  I  discovered  a  silent  gentleman  who 
listened  to  my  remarks  without  any  appearance  of 


MEMORIES   AND    IMPRESSIONS 

paying  attention  to  them.  But  when  I  had  finished 
and  was  waiting  in  nervous  silence,  he  suddenly 
overwhelmed  me  with  a  torrent  of  excited  language. 
What  it  amounted  to  was  that  during  his  lifetime 
my  father  had  domineered  over  that  institution,  and 
that  if  I  thought  I  was  going  to  keep  up  the  tradition 
I  was  exceedingly  mistaken.  On  the  contrary,  the 
professors  were  determined  to  give  me  a  hot  time  of  it 

or,  as  Sir  C D put  it,  to  treat  me  with  the 

utmost  rigor  of  the  rules. 

This  gave  me  food  for  several  days  of  reflection.  I 
had  to  consider  that  Sir  C—  -  D—  -  was,  in  private 
life,  an  unemotional  English  gentleman,  frigid  and 
rather  meticulous  in  the  matter  of  good  form. 
Musical  emotion  had  worked  such  a  person  up  to  a 
pitch  of  passion  so  egregious  as  was  manifested  in  all 
his  features;  musical  passion  had  worked  me  up  to 
such  a  pitch  of  emotion  as  to  let  me  insult  in  the 
most  outrageous  manner  a  harmless  person  like  Mr. 

P ,  whom  I  really  liked.  There  must  be  then 

something  so  unbalancing  in  a  musical  career  as  to 
leave  me  very  little  opening,  I  being,  at  any  rate  in 
my  own  conception,  a  person  singularly  shy  and 
wanting  in  the  faculty  which  is  called  "push." 

I  had  to  remember,  too,  that  my  best  friends — the 
young  men  and  women  with  whom  personally  I  got 
on  in  the  extreme  of  geniality  —  became  invariably 
frigid  and  monosyllabic  as  soon  as  I  mentioned 
my  musical  ambitions.  There  was  about  these 

90 


MUSIC   AND    MASTERS 

people  on  such  occasions  an  air  of  reserve,  an  air 
almost  of  deafness;  whereas,  when  they  spoke  of 
their  own  ambitions  they  became  animated,  gay,  enthu- 
siastic. This  might  be  evidence  that  all  musicians 
were  hopelessly  self-centred,  or  it  might  be  evidence 
that  my  music  was  no  good  at  all.  I  dare  say  both 
were  true.  Whether  it  were  both  or  either  it  seemed  to 
me  that  here  was  no  career  for  a  person  craving  the 
sympathy  of  enthusiasm  and  the  contagious  encour- 
agement of  applause.  Possibly  had  I  lived  in  Germany 
it  would  have  been  different,  for  in  Germany  there  is 
musical  life,  a  musical  atmosphere.  In  the  German 
establishments  for  musical  education  there  is  none  of 
this  deafness,  there  is  none  of  this  reserve,  there  is 
none  of  this  self-centred  abstraction.  There  is  a  busy, 
there  is  a  contagious  life,  and  student  keeps  watch  on 
student  with  an  extreme  anxiety  which  may  be  evi- 
dence of  no  more  than  a  determination  to  know  what 
the  other  fellow  is  doing  and  to  go  one  better. 

In  England,  at  any  rate  in  the  musical  world  as  in 
the  world  of  all  the  other  arts,  a  general  change  seems 
gradually  to  have  come  over  the  atmosphere  in  the 
last  quarter  of  a  century.  Jealousies  among  execu- 
tants, among  composers,  have  diminished;  and  along 
with  them  have  diminished  the  enthusiasm  and  the 
partisanships  of  the  public.  In  the  fifties  and  sixties 
there  was  an  extraordinary  outcry  against  the  Pre- 
Raphaelite  movement,  in  the  seventies  and  eighties 
there  was  an  outcry  almost  more  extraordinary  against 
7  91 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

what  was  called  the  Music  of  the  Future.  As  I  have 
said  elsewhere,  Charles  Dickens  attempted  to  get  the 
authorities  to  imprison  the  Pre-Raphaelite  painters 
because  he  considered  that  their  works  were  blas- 
phemous. And  he  was  backed  by  a  whole,  great  body 
of  public  opinion.  In  the  seventies  and  eighties  there 
were  cries  for  the  imprisonment  alike  of  the  critics 
who  upheld  and  the  artistes  who  performed  the  Music 
of  the  Future.  The  compositions  of  Wagner  were 
denounced  as  being  atheistic,  sexually  immoral,  and 
tending  to  further  socialism  and  the  throwing  of 
bombs.  Wagnerites  were  threatened  with  assassina- 
tion, and  assaults  between  critics  of  the  rival  schools 
were  things  not  unknown  in  the  foyer  of  the  opera. 
I  really  believe  that  my  father,  as  the  chief  ex- 
ponent of  Wagner  in  these  islands,  did  go  in  some 
personal  danger.  Extraordinary  pressures  were 
brought  to  bear  upon  the  more  prominent  critics  of  the 
day,  the  pressure  coming,  as  a  rule,  from  the  ex- 
ponents of  the  school  of  Italian  opera.  Thus,  at  the 
openings  of  the  opera  seasons  packing-cases  of  large 
dimensions  and  considerable  in  number  would  arrive 
at  the  house  of  the  ferocious  critic  of  the  chief  news- 
paper of  England.  They  would  contain  singular 
assortments  of  comestibles  and  of  objects  of  art. 
Thus  I  remember  half  a  dozen  hams,  the  special 
product  of  some  north  Italian  town;  six  cases  of 
Rhine  wine,  which  were  no  doubt  intended  to  pro- 
pitiate the  malignant  Teuton;  a  reproduction  of  the 

92 


Medici  Venus  in  marble,  painted  with  phosphoric 
paint,  so  that  it  gleamed  blue  and  ghostly  in  the 
twilight;  a  case  of  Bohemian  glass,  and  several 
strings  of  Italian  sausage.  And  these  packing- 
cases,  containing  no  outward  sign  of  their  senders, 
would  have  to  be  unpacked  and  then  once  more 
repacked,  leaving  the  servants  with  fingers  damaged 
by  nails,  and  passages  littered  with  straw.  Inside 
would  be  found  the  cards  of  Italian  prime  donne, 
tenors  or  basses,  newly  arrived  in  London,  and  send- 
ing servile  homage  to  the  illustrious  critic  of  the 
"Giornale  Times."  On  one  occasion  a  letter  contain- 
ing bank-notes  for  £50  arrived  from  a  prima  donna 
with  a  pathetic  note  begging  the  critic  to  absent  himself 
from  her  first  night.  Praise  from  a  Wagnerite  she  con- 
sidered to  be  impossible,  but  she  was  ready  to  pay  for 
silence.  I  do  not  know  whether  this  letter  inspired  my 
father  with  the  idea  of  writing  to  the  next  suppliant 
that  he  was  ready  to  accept  her  present — it  was  the 
case  of  Bohemian  glass — but  that  in  that  case  he  would 
never  write  a  word  about  her  singing.  He  meant  the 
letter,  of  course,  as  a  somewhat  clumsy  joke,  but  the 
lady — she  was  not,  however,  an  Italian — possessing  a 
sense  of  humor,  at  once  accepted  the  offer.  This  put 
my  father  rather  in  a  quandary,  for  Madame  H. 
was  one  of  the  greatest  exponents  of  emotional  tragic 
music  that  there  had  ever  been,  and  the  occasion  on 
which  she  was  to  appear  was  the  first  performance  in 
England  of  one  of  the  great  operas  of  the  world.  I 

93 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

do  not  exactly  know  whether  my  father  went  through 
any  conscientious  troubles — I  presume  he  did,  for  he 
was  a  man  of  a  singular  moral  niceness.  At  any  rate 
he  wrote  an  enthusiastic  notice  of  the  opera  and  an 
enthusiastic  and  deserved  notice  of  the  impersonatrix 
of  Carmen.  And  since  the  Bohemian  glass — or  the 
poor  remains  of  the  breakages  of  a  quarter  of  a  century 
— still  decorate  my  sideboard,  I  presume  that  he 
accepted  the  present.  I  do  not  really  see  what  else 
he  could  have  done. 

Pressure  of  other  sorts  was  also  not  unknown. 
Thus,  there  was  an  opera  produced  by  a  foreign 
baron  who  was  a  distinguished  figure  in  the  diplo- 
matic service,  and  who  was  very  well  looked  on  at 
Court.  In  the  middle  of  the  performance  my  father 
received  a  command  to  go  into  the  royal  box,  where  a 
royal  personage  informed  him  that  in  his  august 
opinion  the  work  was  one  of  genius.  My  father 
replied  that  he  was  sorry  to  differ  from  so  distinguished 
a  connoisseur,  but  that,  in  his  opinion,  the  music  was 
absolute  rubbish — "Lauter  Klatsch."  The  reply  was 
undiplomatic  and  upon  the  whole  regrettable,  but  my 
father  had  been  irritated  by  the  fact  that  a  good  deal 
of  Court  pressure  had  already  been  brought  to  bear 
upon  him.  I  believe  that  there  were  diplomatic 
reasons  for  desiring  to  flatter  the  composer  of  the 
opera,  who  was  attached  to  a  foreign  embassy — the 
embassy  of  the  nation  with  whom,  for  the  moment, 
the  diplomatic  relations  of  Great  Britain  were  some- 

94 


MUSIC    AND    MASTERS 

what  strained.  So  that,  without  doubt,  His  Royal 
Highness  was  as  patriotically  in  the  right  as  my  father 
was  in  a  musical  sense.  Eventually  the  notice  of  the 
opera  was  written  by  another  hand.  The  performance 
of  this  particular  opera  remains  in  my  mind  because, 
during  one  of  its  scenes,  which  represented  the  frozen 
circle  of  hell,  the  cotton-wool,  which  figured  as  snow 
on  the  stage,  caught  fire  and  began  to  burn.  An  in- 
cipient panic  took  place  among  the  audience,  but  the 
orchestra,  under  a  firm  composer  whose  name  I  have 
unfortunately  forgotten,  continued  to  play,  and  the 
flames  were  extinguished  by  one  of  the  singers  using 
his  cloak.  But  I  still  remember  being  in  the  back  of 
the  box  and  seeing  in  the  foreground,  silhouetted 
against  the  lights  of  the  stage,  the  figures  of  my  father 
and  of  some  one  else — I  think  it  was  William  Rossetti 
— standing  up  and  shouting  down  into  the  stalls: 
"Sit  down,  brutes!  Sit  down,  cowards!" 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  not  to  be  imagined  that  acts 
of  kindness  and  good-fellowship  were  rare  under  this 
seething  mass  of  passions  and  of  jealousies.  Thus 
at  one  of  the  Three  Choir  Festivals,  my  father,  having 
had  the  misfortune  to  sprain  his  ankle,  was  unable  to 
be  present  in  the  cathedral.  His  notice  was  written 
for  him  by  the  critic  of  the  paper  which  was  most 
violently  opposed  to  views  at  all  Wagnerian — a  gen- 
tleman whom,  till  that  moment,  my  father  regarded  as 
his  bitterest  personal  enemy.  This  critic  happened 
to  be  staying  in  the  same  hotel,  and,  having  heard  of 

95 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

the  accident,  volunteered  to  write  the  notice  out  of 
sheer  good  feeling  This  gentleman,  an  extreme  bon 
vivant  and  a  man  of  an  excellent  and  versatile  talent, 
has  since  told  me  that  he  gave  himself  particular 
trouble  to  imitate  my  father's  slightly  cumbrous  Ger- 
manic English  and  his  extreme  modernist  views. 
This  service  was  afterward  repaid  by  my  father  in  the 
following  circumstances.  It  was  again  one  of  the 
Three  Choir  Festivals — at  Worcester,  I  think,  and  we 
were  stopping  at  Malvern — my  father  and  Mr.  S. 
going  in  every  day  to  the  cathedral  city.  Mr.  S.  was 
either  staying  with  us  or  in  an  adjoining  house,  and  on 
one  Wednesday  evening,  his  appetite  being  sharpened 
by  an  unduly  protracted  performance  of  :'The 
Messiah,"  Mr.  S.  partook  so  freely  of  the  pleasures 
of  the  table  that  he  omitted  altogether  to  write  his 
notice.  This  fact  he  remembered  just  before  the 
closing  of  the  small  local  telegraph  office,  and,  although 
Mr.  S.  was  by  no  means  in  a  condition  to  write  his 
notice,  he  was  yet  sufficiently  mellow  with  wine  to  be 
lachrymose  and  overwhelmed  at  the  idea  of  losing  his 
post.  We  rushed  off  at  once  to  the  telegraph  office 
and  did  what  we  could  to  induce  the  officials  to 
keep  the  wires  open  while  the  notice  was  being  written. 
But  all  inducements  failed.  My  father  hit  upon  a 
stratagem  at  the  last  moment.  At  that  date  it  was  a 
rule  of  the  post-office  that  if  the  beginning  of  a  long 
message  were  handed  in  before  eight  o'clock  the  office 
must  be  kept  open  until  its  conclusion  as  long  as 

96 


MUSIC   AND    MASTERS 

there  was  no  break  in  the  handing  in  of  slips.  My 
father  therefore  commanded  me  to  telegraph  any- 
thing that  I  liked  to  the  newspaper  office  as  long  as 
I  kept  it  up  while  he  was  writing  the  notice  of  "The 
Messiah."  And  the  only  thing  that  came  into  my 
head  at  the  moment  was  the  church  service.  The 
newspaper  was  therefore  astonished  to  receive  a  long 
telegram  beginning:  "When  the  wicked  man  turneth 
away  from  the  sin  that  he  has  committed"  and  con- 
tinuing through  the  "  Te  Deum "  and  the  "  Nunc 
Dimittis,"  till  suddenly  it  arrived  at  "The  Three 
Choirs  Festival.  Worcester,  Wednesday,  July  ayth, 
1887." 

Nowadays  the  acts  of  kindliness  no  doubt  remain  a 
feature  of  the  musical  world,  but  I  think  the  enthu- 
siasms as  well  as  the  ferocities  have  diminished  alto- 
gether. Composers  like  Strauss  and  Debussy  steal 
upon  us  as  it  were  in  the  night.  Yet  both  Strauss  and 
Debussy  must  be  nearly  as  incomprehensible  to  good 
Wagnerites  as  were  the  works  of  Wagner  to  enthu- 
siastic followers  of  Rossini  and  the  early  Verdi.  Yet 
there  are  no  outcries;  there  is  no  clamoring  for  the 
instant  imprisonment  of  Strauss  or  the  critic  of  the 
— .  Nor  is  this  want  of  enthusiasm  limited  to 
England.  A  little  time  ago  I  was  present  at  the  first 
performance  in  Paris  of  Strauss's  "Also  sprach 
Zarathustra."  The  hall  was  filled  with  "All  Paris" — 
all  Paris,  polite,  indifferent,  blagueur,  anxious  to  be 
present  at  anything  that  was  new,  foreign,  and  exotic. 

97 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

There  was  a  respectable  amount  of  applause,  there 
was  some  yawning  decently  concealed.  In  the  middle 
of  it  the  old  gentleman  who  had  taken  me  to  the 
performance  got  up  suddenly  and  made  for  the  door. 
He  had,  as  I  heard,  some  altercation  with  the  attend- 
ants, for  there  was  a  rule  that  the  doors  could  not  be 
opened  while  the  music  played.  I  followed  him  to  the 
door  and  found  my  friend  —  the  late  General  du 

T ,  one    of  the  veterans   of  the  war  of  1870— 

explaining  to  the  attendant  that  he  felt  himself  gravely 
indisposed  and  that  he  must  positively  be  allowed  to 
go  away.  We  were  at  last  permitted  to  go  out.  Out- 
side, the  General  said  that  Strauss's  music  really 
had  made  him  positively  ill.  And  it  had  made  him  still 
more  ill  to  have  it  received  with  applause.  He  wanted 
to  know  what  had  happened  to  France — what  had 
happened  to  Paris,  to  that  Paris  which,  in  the  seven- 
ties, had  resisted  by  force  of  arms  the  production  of 
"Tannhauser"  at  the  Opera.  The  music  appeared 
to  him  horrible,  unbearable,  and  yet  no  one  had 
protested. 

I  could  not  help  asking  him  why  he  had  been  present 
at  all,  and  he  said,  with  an  air  of  fine  reason: 

"Well,  we  move  in  modern  times.  I  still  think  it 
was  wrong  to  produce  Wagner  at  the  Opera  so  soon 
after  the  war.  It  was  unpatriotic,  it  was  to  take 
revenge  in  the  wrong  direction.  But  I  have  had  time 
enough,  my  friend,  to  become  reconciled  to  the  music 
of  Wagner  as  music.  And  I  thought  to  myself,  now 

98 


MUSIC   AND    MASTERS 

here  is  a  new  German  composer;  I  will  not  again 
make  the  mistake  of  violently  abusing  his  music 
before  I  have  heard  a  note  of  it.  For  the  music  of 
Wagner  I  abused  violently  before  I  had  heard  a  note 
of  it." 

The  General  went  on  to  say  that  this  new  music 
was  worse  than  nonsense;  it  was  an  outrage.  The 
high,  discordant  notes  gripped  the  entrails  and  gave 
one  colic. 

"Nevertheless,"  he  said,  "you  will  see  that  no  critic 
says  a  word  against  this  music.  They  are  all  afraid. 
They  all  fear  to  make  themselves  appear  as  foolish 
as  did  the  critics  who  opposed  the  school  of  Wagner." 

And,  upon  the  whole,  I  am  inclined  to  think  that 
the  General  was  right.  The  other  day  I  attended  a  con- 
cert consisting  mainly  of  the  Song  Cycles  of  Debussy, 
setting  the  words  of  Verlaine.  They  were  sung  by  an 
Armenian  lady  who  had  escaped  from  a  Turkish 
harem,  and  had  had  no  musical  training.  She  was 
a  barbaric  creature  who  uttered  loud  howls,  and  the 
effect  was  to  me  disagreeable  in  the  extreme;  all  the 
same  the  audience  was  large  and  enthusiastic,  and 
the  most  enlightened  organ  of  musical  opinion  of 
to-day  spoke  of  the  performance  with  a  chastened 
enthusiasm.  I  happened  to  meet  the  writer  of  the 
notice  in  the  course  of  the  following  afternoon  and  I 
asked  him  what  he  really  got  for  himself  out  of  that 
singular  collocation  of  sounds.  He  said  airily:  "Well, 
you  see,  one  gets  emotions!" 

99 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

I  said:  "Good  God!  what  sort  of  emotions  ?" 

He  answered:  "Well,  you  see,  if  one  shuts  one's  eyes 
one  can  imagine  that  one  is  eating  strawberry  jam 
and  oysters  in  a  house  of  ill-fame  and  a  cat  is  rushing 
violently  up  and  down  the  keyboard  of  the  piano  with 
a  cracker  tied  to  its  tail." 

I  said:  "Then  why  in  the  world  didn't  you  say  so 
in  your  notice  ?" 

He  smiled  blandly:  "Well,  you  see,  an  ignorant 
public  might  take  such  a  description  for  abuse,  and 
we  cannot  afford  to  abuse  anything  now." 

I  said:  "You  mean  that  you're  still  frightened  of 
Wagner  ?" 

"Oh,  we're  all  most  frightened  of  Wagner,"  he 
answered,  "and  it's  not  only  that.  The  business 
managers  of  our  newspapers  won't  let  us  abuse  any- 
thing, or  the  papers  would  never  get  any  more  concert 
advertisements." 

I  fancy  that  this  last  statement  was  in  the  way  of 
pulling  my  leg,  for  as  a  matter  of  fact  there  is  only  one 
newspaper  in  London  that  has  any  concert  advertise- 
ments worth  speaking  of,  and  this  was  not  the  paper 
that  my  friend  represented.  The  remark  would,  how- 
ever, have  been  true  enough  of  the  reviewers  of  books, 
for,  owing  to  the  dread  of  losing  publishers'  advertise- 
ments, there  is  practically  no  paper — or  there  is  prac- 
tically only  one  paper — in  London  that  will  insert  an 
unfriendly  review.  Personally,  being  a  writer  of 
exclusive  tastes  or  of  a  jealous  temperament,  I  am 

100 


MUSIC   AND    MASTERS 

never  permitted  to  review  a  book  at  all.  Going, 
however,  the  other  day  into  the  house  of  a  friend  who 
reviews  books  for  one  of  our  leading  organs,  I  per- 
ceived upon  a  table  the  book  of  a  much-boomed 
author  who  appeared  to  me  to  be  exceedingly  nau- 
seous. I  said: 

"Do,  for  goodness'  sake,  let  me  save  you  the  trouble 
of  noticing  that  work." 

And  it  was  placed  in  my  hand.  I  wrote  a  column 
of  fairly  moderate  criticism;  I  extinguished  the  book, 
I  murdered  the  author  with  little  stilettoes.  The 
notice  was  never  printed,  though  my  friend,  the 
reviewer,  duly  received  her  check  for  one  column, 
£i  ijs.  6d.,  which,  I  presume,  was  the  price  of 
silence. 

And  there  in  a  nutshell  the  whole  matter  is.  The 
ferocity  of  the  critics  for  one  reason  or  another  has 
come  to  an  end.  The  eccentricities  of  the  artists  are 
curbed,  the  enthusiasms  of  the  public  are  dead.  I 
do  not  know  where  we  should  have  to  go  nowadays 
to  find  the  cozy  musical  enthusiasms  that  subsisted 
into  the  eighties  and  nineties.  Where  now  shall  we 
find  the  performers  of  the  old  Monday  "Pops"? 
Where  now  shall  we  find  the  old  little  family  party 
that  the  audience  was  ?  We  used  to  pay  a  shilling 
and  we  used  to  go  in  through  passages  that  resembled 
rats'  holes,  in  the  back  of  the  old  St.  James's  Hall. 
We  used  to  sit  in  the  semicircle  of  hard  wooden  seats 
that  held  the  orchestra  on  symphony  days.  But  these 

101 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

were  quartet  concerts.  There  was  Joachim,  with 
the  leonine,  earnest  head.  There  was  Piatti,  with 
a  gray,  grizzled,  shaggy  hair  and  beard,  so  that  his 
head  seemed  exactly  to  reproduce  the  lines  of  the 
head  of  his  violoncello.  There  was  Ries,  with  broad, 
honest,  blond  Teutonic  features;  there  was  Strauss, 
with  the  head  of  a  little,  bald  old  mole,  with  golden 
spectacles  and  a  myopic  air.  Joachim  would  take  a 
glance  round  the  hall,  having  his  violin  resting  already 
upon  a  handkerchief  upon  his  chest  beneath  his  chin. 
He  would  make  a  little  flourish  with  his  bow  like  the 
conductor  at  an  orchestra,  the  other  three  sitting 
silent,  intent,  caught  up  away  from  the  world.  Joachim 
would  lay  his  bow  upon  the  strings;  the  sounds  of 
the  opening  notes  of  the  quartet  would  steal  into 
the  air  and,  engrossed  all  round  the  orchestra,  we 
would  follow  the  music  in  the  little,  miniature  scores 
with  the  tiny  notes — first  subject,  second  subject, 
working  out,  free  phantasia,  recapitulation.  We 
should  be  almost  as  intent  as  the  performers  and  we 
should  know  each  other — all  of  the  audience — almost 
as  well.  You  could  not  doubt  the  excellence  of  the 
music  or  the  fellowship;  there  would  never  be  a 
wrong  note,  just  as  there  would  never  be  a  moment's 
lapse  in  our  attention. 

When  these  concerts  were  over  it  was  sometimes 
my  privilege  to  walk  home  along  with  Joachim  and 
to  carry  his  almost  too  precious  violin.  Almost  too 
precious,  since  it  made  the  privilege  so  very  nervous 

102 


JOSEPH      JOACHIM 


MUSIC    AND    MASTERS 

an  honor.  And  I  remember  that  on  one  occasion 
somewhere  in  a  by-street  we  came  upon  an  old  blind 
fiddler  playing  a  violin  whose  body  was  formed  of  a 
corned-meat  tin.  Joachim  stood  for  some  minutes 
regarding  the  old  man,  then  suddenly  he  took  the 
violin  into  his  own  hands  and,  having  dusted  it,  asked 
me  to  produce  his  own  bow  from  his  own  case.  He 
stood  for  some  little  time  playing  a  passage  from  the 
"  Trillo  del  Diabolo  of  Tartini,"  looking  as  intent,  as 
earnest,  and  as  abstracted  there  in  the  empty  street  as 
he  was  accustomed  to  do  upon  the  public  platform. 
After  a  time  he  restored  the  instrument  to  the  old 
fiddler  along  with  a  shilling  and  we  pursued  our  way. 
Any  executant  of  a  personality  more  florid  would  have 
conducted  the  old  blind  fiddler  into  a  main  road, 
would  have  passed  round  the  hat  himself,  would  have 
crumpled  into  it  several  bank-notes,  and  would  with- 
out doubt  have  had  the  affair  reported  in  the  news- 
papers. I  saw,  indeed,  only  yesterday  such  a  feat 
reported  of  a  celebrated  advertising  'cellist.  Joachim, 
however,  merely  wanted  to  know  how  an  instrument 
with  a  metal  belly  would  sound  if  it  were  properly 
played,  and,  having  the  information,  since  it  seemed 
to  him  to  be  worth  one  shilling,  he  paid  a  shilling  for  it. 
I  do  not  know  where  we  could  go  nowadays  to  recap- 
ture that  spirit  of  earnestness.  On  the  other  hand,  I 
do  not  know  where  I  should  go  to  find  a  pnma  donna 
who  would  boast  of  having  administered  parsley  to 
another's  parrot.  And  of  one  thing  I  am  fairly  con- 

103 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

fident — if  practically  none  of  us  any  more  get  very 
excited  about  rival  schools  of  music,  very  few  of  us 
at  social  functions  talk  quite  so  loudly  as  used  to  be 
the  case  in  the  days  of  Cimabue  Brown,  and  the 
Punch  of  Mr.  du  Maurier.  We  talk,  of  course,  and 
we  talk  all  the  time,  but  we  talk  in  much  lower  voices. 
We  find  that  music  agreeably  accompanies  conversa- 
tion as  long  as  we  do  not  try  to  outshout  the  instru- 
ments. We  find,  indeed,  that  music  is  so  stimulating 
to  our  ideas  that,  whereas  small  talk  may  come 
exceedingly  difficult  to  us  at  any  other  time,  there 
is  nothing  that  so  makes  irresistibly  interesting  topics 
bubble  up  in  the  mind  as  a  pianissimo  movement 
in  the  strings.  Waiting  impatiently,  therefore,  for  a 
passage  in  louder  tones,  we  commence  avidly  our 
furtive  and  whispered  conversation,  which  continues 
till  the  last  note  of  the  selection.  And  this  last  note 
leaves  us  conveniently  high  and  dry  with  a  feeling  of 
nakedness  and  of  abashment.  Thus,  indeed,  music 
has  come  into  its  own.  If  it  be  less  of  an  art  it  has  a 
greater  utility.  It  has  helped  the  Englishman  to  talk. 
A  few  years  ago  one  might  drearily  have  imagined 
that  that  was  impossible. 

The  other  day  I  was  at  a  wedding  reception;  there 
was  a  very  large  crowd.  In  one  corner  an  excellent 
quintet  discussed  selections  from  the  "Contes  d'Hof- 
mann."  We  were  all  talking  twenty  to  the  dozen. 
My  vis-a-vis  was  telling  me  something  that  did  not 
interest  me,  when  the  voice  of  a  man  behind  me  said: 

104 


MUSIC    AND    MASTERS 

"So  they  left  him  there  in  prison  with  a  broken  bottle 
of  poison  in  his  pocket."  And  then  the  music  stopped 
suddenly  and  I  never  heard  who  the  man  was  or  what 
he  had  done  to  get  into  prison  or  why  he  had  broken 
the  bottle  of  poison. 


VI 

PRE-RAPHAELITES    AND    PRISONS 

WHEN  I  was  a  little  boy  there  still  attached 
something  of  the  priestly  to  all  the  functionaries 
of  the  Fine  Arts  or  the  humaner  Letters.  To  be  a 
poet  like  Mr.  Swinburne  or  like  Mr.  Rossetti,  or 
even  like  Mr.  Arthur  O'Shaughnessy,  had  about  it 
something  tremendous,  something  rather  awful.  If 
Mr.  Swinburne  was  in  the  house  we  children  knew 
of  it  up  in  the  nursery.  A  hush  communicated 
itself  to  the  entire  establishment.  The  scullery 
maid,  whose  name  I  remember  was  Nelly;  the 
cook,  whose  name  was  Sophy;  the  housemaid,  who 
was  probably  Louie,  or  it  may  have  been  Lizzie, 
and  the  nurse,  who  was  certainly  Mrs.  Atterbury — 
she  had  seen  more  murders  and  more  gory  occurrences 
than  any  person  I  have  ever  since  met — even  the 
tremendous  governess,  who  was  known  as  Miss  Hall, 
though  that  was  not  her  name,  and  who  had  attached 
to  her  some  strange  romance  such  as  that  she  was 
wooed  too  persistently  by  a  foreign  count  with  a  name 
like  Pozzo  di  Borgo — though  that  was  not  the  name— 
we  all  of  us,  all  the  inhabitants  of  the  back  nooks  and 

1 06 


PRE-RAPHAELITES    AND    PRISONS 

crannies  of  a  large  stucco  house,  fell  to  talking  in 
whispers.  I  used  to  be  perfectly  convinced  that  the 
ceiling  would  fall  in  if  I  raised  my  voice  in  the  very 
slightest.  This  excitement,  this  agitation,  these 
tremulous  undertones  would  become  exaggerated  if 
the  visitor  was  the  editor  of  the  Times,  Richard 
Wagner,  or  Robert  Franz,  a  composer  whom  we  were 
all  taught  especially  to  honor,  even  Richard  Wagner 
considering  him  the  greatest  song-writer  in  the  world. 
And,  indeed,  he  was  the  mildest  and  sweetest  of 
creatures,  with  a  face  like  that  of  an  etherealized 
German  pastor  and  smelling  more  than  any  other 
man  I  ever  knew  of  cigars.  Certain  other  poets — 
though  it  was  more  marked  in  the  case  of  poetesses — 
made  their  arrival  known  to  the  kitchen,  the  back, 
and  the  upper  parts  of  the  house  by  the  most  tremen- 
dous thunders.  The  thunders  would  reverberate,  die 
away,  roll  out  once  more  and  once  more  die  away 
for  periods  that  seemed  very  long  to  the  childish  mind. 
And  these  reverberations  would  be  caused,  not  by 
Apollo,  the  god  of  song,  nor  by  any  of  the  Nine  Muses, 
nor  yet  by  the  clouds  that  surrounded,  as  I  was  then 
convinced,  the  poetic  brow.  They  were  caused  by 
dissatisfied  cabmen. 

And  this  was  very  symptomatic  of  the  day.  The 
poet — and  still  more  the  poetess — of  the  seventies  and 
eighties,  though  an  awful,  was  a  frail  creature,  who  had 
to  be  carried  about  from  place  to  place,  and  gener- 
ally in  a  four-wheeled  cab.  Indeed,  if  my  recollection 
8  10? 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

of  these  poetesses  in  my  very  earliest  days  was  accom- 
panied always  by  thunders  and  expostulations,  my 
images  of  them  in  slightly  later  years,  when  I  was 
not  so  strictly  confined  to  the  nursery — my  images 
of  them  were  always  those  of  somewhat  elderly  ladies, 
forbidding  in  aspect,  with  gray  hair,  hooked  noses, 
flashing  eyes,  and  continued  trances  of  indignation 
against  reviewers.  They  emerged  ungracefully — for 
no  one  ever  yet  managed  to  emerge  gracefully  from 
the  door  of  a  four-wheeler  —  sometimes  backward, 
from  one  of  those  creaking  and  dismal  tabernacles 
and  pulling  behind  them  odd-shaped  parcels.  Hold- 
ing the  door  open,  with  his  whip  in  one  hand, 
would  stand  the  cabman.  He  wore  an  infinite 
number  of  little  capes  on  his  overcoat;  a  gray 
worsted  muffler  would  be  coiled  many  times  round 
his  throat,  and  the  lower  part  of  his  face  and  his  top 
hat  would  be  of  some  unglossy  material  that  I  have 
never  been  able  to  identify.  After  a  short  interval, 
his  hand  would  become  extended,  the  flat  palm  dis- 
playing such  coins  as  the  poetess  had  laid  in  it.  And, 
when  the  poetess  with  her  odd  bundles  was  three- 
quarters  of  the  way  up  the  doorsteps,  the  cabman, 
a  man  of  the  slowest  and  most  deliberate,  would  be 
pulling  the  muffler  down  from  about  his  mouth  and 
exclaiming:  "Wot's  this?" 

The  poetess,  without  answering,  but  with  looks  of 
enormous  disdain,  would  scuffle  into  the  house  and 
the  front  door  would  close.  Then  upon  the  knocker 

108 


PRE-RAPHAELITES    AND    PRISONS 

the  cabman  would  commence   his   thunderous   sym- 
phony. 

Somewhat  later  more  four-wheelers  would  arrive 
with  more  poetesses.  Then  still  more  four-wheelers 
with  elderly  poets;  untidy -looking  young  gentle- 
men with  long  hair  and  wide-awake  hats,  in  attitudes 
of  dejection  and  fatigue,  would  ascend  the  steps;  a 
hansom  or  two  would  drive  up  containing  rather 
smarter,  stout,  elderly  gentlemen  wearing  as  a  rule 
black  coats  with  velvet  collars  and  most  usually  black 
gloves.  These  were  reviewers,  editors  of  the  Athe- 
nceum  and  of  other  journals.  Then  there  would  come 
quite  smart  gentlemen  with  an  air  of  prosperity  in 
their  clothes  and  with  deference  somewhat  resembling 
that  of  undertakers  in  their  manners.  These  would 
be  publishers. 

You  are  to  understand  that  what  was  about  to  pro- 
ceed was  the  reading  to  this  select  gathering  of  the 
latest  volume  of  poems  by  Mrs.  Clara  Fletcher — that 
is  not  the  name — the  authoress  of  what  was  said  to 
be  a  finer  sequence  of  sonnets  than  those  of  Shakes- 
peare. And  before  a  large  semicircle  of  chairs  occu- 
pied by  the  audience  that  I  have  described,  and  with 
Mr.  Clara  Fletcher  standing  obsequiously  behind 
her  to  hand  to  her  from  the  odd-shaped  bundles  of 
manuscripts  the  pages  that  she  required,  Mrs.  Clara 
Fletcher,  with  her  regal  head  regally  poised,  having 
quelled  the  assembly  with  a  single  glance,  would  com- 
mence to  read. 

109 


MEMORIES   AND    IMPRESSIONS 

Mournfully  then,  up  and  down  the  stone  staircases, 
there  would  flow  two  hollow  sounds.  For,  in  those 
days,  it  was  the  habit  of  all  poets  and  poetesses  to 
read  aloud  upon  every  possible  occasion,  and  whenever 
they  read  aloud  to  employ  an  imitation  of  the  voice 
invented  by  the  late  Lord  Tennyson  and  known,  in 
those  days,  as  the  ore  rotunda — "with  the  round  mouth 
mouthing  out  their  hollow  o's  and  a's." 

The  effect  of  this  voice  heard  from  outside  a  door 
was  to  a  young  child  particularly  awful.  It  went 
on  and  on,  suggesting  the  muffled  baying  of  a  large 
hound  that  is  permanently  dissatisfied  with  the 
world.  And  this  awful  rhythm  would  be  broken  in 
upon  from  time  to  time  by  the  thunders  of  the  cab- 
man. How  the  housemaid — the  housemaid  was 
certainly  Charlotte  Kirby — dealt  with  this  man  of 
wrath  I  never  could  rightly  discover.  Apparently 
the  cabman  would  thunder  upon  the  door.  Charlotte, 
keeping  it  on  the  chain,  would  open  it  for  about  a  foot. 
The  cabman  would  exclaim,  "Wot's  this?"  and 
Charlotte  would  shut  the  door  in  his  face.  The  cab- 
man would  remain  inactive  for  four  minutes  in  order 
to  recover  his  breath.  Then  once  more  his  stiff  arm 
would  approach  the  knocker  and  again  the  thunders 
would  resound.  The  cabman  would  exclaim:  "A 
bob  and  a  tanner  from  the  Elephant  and  Castle  to 
Tottenham  Court  Road!"  and  Charlotte  would  again 
close  the  door  in  his  face.  This  would  continue  for 
perhaps  half  an  hour.  Then  the  cabman  would 

no 


PRE-RAPHAELITES   AND    PRISONS 

drive  away  to  meditate.  Later  he  would  return  and 
the  same  scenes  would  be  gone  through.  He  would 
retire  once  more  for  more  meditation  and  return  in 
the  company  of  a  policeman.  Then  Charlotte  would 
open  the  front  door  wide  and  by  doing  no  more  than 
ejaculating,  "My  good  man!"  she  would  appear  to 
sweep  out  of  existence  policeman,  cab,  cab-horse,  cab- 
man and  whip,  and  a  settled  peace  would  descend 
upon  the  house,  lulled  into  silence  by  the  reverbera- 
tion of  the  hollow  o's  and  a's.  In  about  five  minutes' 
time  the  policeman  would  return  and  converse  amiably 
with  Charlotte  for  three-quarters  of  an  hour  through 
the  area  railings.  I  suppose  that  was  really  why  cab- 
men were  always  worsted  and  poetesses  protected 
from  these  importunities  in  the  dwelling  over  whose 
destinies  Charlotte  presided  for  forty  years. 

The  function  that  was  proceeding  behind  the  closed 
doors  would  now  seem  incredible;  for  the  poetess 
would  redd  on  from  two  to  three  and  a  half  hours. 
At  the  end  of  this  time — such  was  the  fortitude  of 
the  artistic  when  Victoria  was  still  the  Widow  at 
Windsor — an  enormous  high  babble  of  applause 
would  go  up.  The  forty  or  fifty  poetesses,  young  poets, 
old  poets,  painter-poets,  reviewers,  editors  of  Athe- 
nceums  and  the  like  would  divide  themselves  into  solid 
bodies,  each  body  of  ten  or  twelve  surrounding  one  of 
the  three  or  four  publishers  and  forcing  this  unfortunate 
man  to  bid  against  his  unfortunate  rivals  for  the 
privilege  of  publishing  this  immortal  masterpiece.  My 

in 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

grandfather  would  run  from  body  to  body,  ejaculating: 
"Marvellous  genius!"  "First  woman  poet  of  the  age!" 
"Lord  Tennyson  himself  said  he  was  damned  if  he 
wasn't  envious  of  the  sonnet  to  Mehemet  AH!" 

Mr.  Clara  Fletcher  would  be  trotting  about  on 
tiptoe  fetching  for  the  lady  from  whom  he  took  his 
name — now  exhausted  and  recumbent  in  a  deep  arm- 
chair— smelling  bottles,  sponges  full  of  aromatic 
vinegar  to  press  upon  her  brow,  glasses  of  sherry, 
thin  biscuits,  and  raw  eggs  in  tumblers.  As  a  boy  I 
used  to  think  vaguely  that  these  comestibles  were 
really  nectar  and  ambrosia. 

In  the  early  days  I  was  only  once  permitted  to  be 
present  at  these  august  ceremonies.  I  say  I  was  per- 
mitted to  be  present,  but  actually  I  was  caught  and 
forced  very  much  against  my  will  to  attend  the  rendi- 
tion by  my  aunt,  Lucy  Rossetti,  who,  with  persistence, 
that  to  me  at  the  time  appeared  fiendish,  insisted  upon 
attempting  to  turn  me  into  a  genius  too.  Alas !  hearing 
Mr.  Arthur  O'Shaughnessy  read  "  Music  and  Moon- 
light "  did  not  turn  poor  little  me  into  a  genius.  It  sent 
me  to  sleep,  and  I  was  carried  from  the  room  by 
Charlotte,  disgraced,  and  destined  from  that  time 
forward  only  to  hear  those  hollow  sounds  from  the 
other  side  of  the  door.  Afterward  I  should  see  the 
publishers,  one  proudly  descending  the  stairs,  putting 
his  check  -  book  back  into  his  overcoat  pocket,  and 
the  others  trying  vainly  to  keep  their  heads  erect 
under  the  glances  of  scorn  that  the  rest  of  the  de- 

112 


PRE-RAPHAELITES    AND    PRISONS 

parting  company  poured  upon  them.  And  Mr.  Clara 
Fletcher  would  be  carefully  folding  the  check  into  his 
waistcoat  pocket,  while  his  wife,  from  a  large  reticule, 
produced  one  more  eighteenpence  wrapped  up  in 
tissue-paper. 

This  would  to-day  seem  funny — the  figure  of  Mrs. 
Clara  Fletcher  would  be  grotesque  if  it  were  not  for 
the  fact  that,  to  a  writer,  the  change  that  has  taken 
place  is  so  exceedingly  tragic.  For  who  nowadays 
would  think  of  reading  poetry  aloud,  or  what  pub- 
lisher would  come  to  listen  ?  As  for  a  check  .  .  .  ! 
Yet  this  glorious  scene  that  I  have  described  these 
eyes  of  mine  once  beheld. 

And  then  there  was  that  terrible  word  "genius." 
I  think  my  grandfather,  with  his  romantic  mind,  first 
obtruded  it  on  my  infant  notice.  But  I  am  quite 
certain  that  it  was  my  aunt,  Mrs.  William  Rossetti, 
who  filled  me  with  a  horror  of  its  sound  that  persists 
to  this  day.  In  school-time  the  children  of  my  family 
were  separated  from  their  cousins,  but  in  the  holi- 
days, which  we  spent  as  a  rule  during  our  young  years 
in  lodging-houses  side  by  side,  in  places  like  Bourne- 
mouth or  Hythe,  we  were  delivered  over  to  the  full 
educational  fury  of  our  aunt.  For  this,  no  doubt, 
my  benevolent  but  misguided  father  was  responsible. 
He  had  no  respect  for  schoolmasters,  but  he  had  the 
greatest  possible  respect  for  his  sister-in-law.  In 
consequence,  our  mornings  would  be  taken  up  in 
listening  to  readings  from  the  poets  or  in  improving 

"3 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

our  knowledge  of  foreign  tongues.  My  cousins,  the 
Rossettis,  were  horrible  monsters  of  precocity.  Let 
me  set  down  here  with  what  malignity  I  viewed  their 
proficiency  in  Latin  and  Greek  at  ages  incredibly 
small.  Thus,  I  believe,  my  cousin  Olive  wrote  a 
Greek  play  at  the  age  of  something  like  five.  And 
they  were  perpetually  being  held  up  to  us — or  per- 
haps to  myself  alone,  for  my  brother  was  always 
very  much  the  sharper  of  the  two — as  marvels  of 
genius  whom  I  ought  to  thank  God  for  merely  having 
the  opportunity  to  emulate.  For  my  cousin  Olive's 
infernal  Greek  play,  which  had  to  do  with  Theseus 
and  the  Minotaur,  draped  in  robes  of  the  most  flimsy 
butter-muslin,  I  was  drilled,  a  lanky  boy  of  twelve 
or  so,  to  wander  round  and  round  the  back  drawing- 
room  of  Endsleigh  Gardens,  imbecilely  flapping  my 
naked  arms  before  an  audience  singularly  distinguished 
who  were  seated  in  the  front  room.  The  scenery, 
which  had  been  designed  and  painted  by  my  aunt, 
was,  I  believe,  extremely  beautiful,  and  the  chinoi- 
series,  the  fine  furniture,  and  the  fine  pictures  were 
such  that,  had  I  been  allowed  to  sit  peaceably  among 
the  audience,  I  might  really  have  enjoyed  the  piece. 
But  it  was  my  unhappy  fate  to  wander  round  in  the 
garb  of  a  captive  before  an  audience  that  consisted 
of  Pre-Raphaelite  poets,  ambassadors  of  foreign  pow- 
ers, editors,  poets-laureate,  and  Heaven  knows  what. 
Such  formidable  beings  at  least  did  they  appear  to 
my  childish  imagination.  From  time  to  time  the  rather 

114 


PRE-RAPHAELITES    AND    PRISONS 

high  voice  of  my  father  would  exclaim  from  the 
gloomy  depths  of  the  auditorium,  "Speak  up,  Fordie!" 
Alas !  my  aptitude  for  that  sort  of  sport  being  limited, 
the  only  words  that  were  allotted  to  me  were  the  Greek 
lamentation  "Theu!  Theu!  Theu!"  and  in  the  mean 
while  my  cousin,  Arthur  Rossetti,  who  appeared  only  to 
come  up  to  my  knee,  was  the  hero  Theseus,  strode 
about  with  a  large  sword,  slew  dragons,  and  addressed 
perorations  in  the  Tennysonian  "  o  "  and  "  a  "  style  to  the 
candle-lit  heavens,  with  their  distant  view  of  Athens. 
Thank  God,  having  been  an  adventurous  youth, 
whose  sole  idea  of  true  joy  was  to  emulate  the  doings 
of  the  hero  of  a  work  called  Peck's  Bad  Boy  and  His 
Pa,  or  at  least  to  attain  to  the  lesser  glories  of  Dick 
Harkaway,  who  had  a  repeating  rifle  and  a  tame 
black  jaguar,  and  who  bathed  in  gore  almost  nightly — 
thank  God,  I  say,  that  we  succeeded  in  leading  our 
unsuspecting  cousins  into  dangerous  situations  from 
which  they  only  emerged  by  breaking  limbs.  I 
seem  to  remember  the  young  Rossettis  as  perpetu- 
ally going  about  with  fractured  bones.  I  dis- 
tinctly remember  the  fact  that  I  bagged  my  cousin 
Arthur  with  one  collar-bone,  broken  on  a  boat  slide 
in  my  company,  while  my  younger  sister  brought 
down  her  cousin  Mary  with  a  broken  elbow,  frac- 
tured in  a  stone  hall.  Olive  Rossetti,  I  also  remember 
with  gratification,  cut  her  head  open  at  a  party  given 
by  Miss  Mary  Robinson,  because  she  wanted  to 
follow  me  down  some  dangerous  steps  and  fell  onto 

"5 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

a  flower-pot.  Thus,  if  we  were  immolated  in  butter- 
muslin  fetters  and  in  Greek  plays,  we  kept  our  own 
end  up  a  little  and  we  never  got  hurt.  Why,  I  remem- 
ber pushing  my  brother  out  of  a  second-floor  window 
so  that  he  fell  into  the  area,  and  he  didn't  have  even 
a  bruise  to  show,  while  my  cousins  in  the  full  glory 
of  their  genius  were  never  really  all  of  them  together 
quite  out  of  the  bonesetter's  hands. 

My  aunt  gave  us  our  bad  hours  with  her  excellent 
lessons,  but  I  think  we  gave  her  hers;  so  let  the 
score  be  called  balanced.  Why,  I  remember  pour- 
ing a  pot  of  ink  from  the  first-story  banisters  onto 
the  head  of  Ariadne  Petrici  when  she  was  arrayed 
in  the  robes  of  her  namesake,  whose  part  she  sup- 
ported. For  let  it  not  be  imagined  that  my  aunt 
Rossetti  foisted  my  cousin  Arthur  into  the  position 
of  hero  of  the  play  through  any  kind  of  maternal 
jealousy.  Not  at  all.  She  was  just  as  anxious  to 
turn  me  into  a  genius,  or  to  turn  anybody  into  a  genius. 
It  was  only  that  she  had  such  much  better  material 
in  her  own  children. 

Ah,  that  searching  for  genius,  that  reading  aloud 
of  poems,  that  splendid  keeping  alive  of  the  tradition 
that  a  poet  was  a  seer  and  a  priest  by  the  sheer  virtue 
of  his  craft  and  mystery!  Nowadays,  alas!  for  a  writer 
to  meet  with  any  consideration  at  all  in  the  world  he 
or  she  must  be  at  least  a  social  reformer.  That  began, 
for  the  aesthetic  set  at  least,  with  William  Morris,  who 
first  turned  all  poets  and  poetesses  into  long-necked 

116 


PRE-RAPHAELITES    AND    PRISONS 

creatures  with  red  ties,  or  into  round-shouldered 
maidens  dressed  in  blue  curtain  serge.  For,  indeed, 
when  aestheticism  merged  itself  in  social  propaganda 
the  last  poor  little  fortress  of  the  arts  in  England  was 
divested  of  its  gallant  garrison.  It  might  be  comic 
that  my  Aunt  Lucy  should  turn  her  residence  into  a  sort 
of  hothouse  and  forcing-school  for  geniuses;  it  might 
be  comic  that  my  grandfather  should  proclaim  that 
Mrs.  Clara  Fletcher's  sonnets  were  finer  than  those 
of  Shakespeare.  It  might  be  comic  even  that  all  the 
Pre-Raphaelite  poets  should  back  each  other  up,  and 
all  the  Pre-Raphaelite  painters  spend  hours  every  day 
in  jobbing  each  other's  masterpieces  into  municipal 
galleries.  But  behind  it  there  was  a  feeling  that  the 
profession  of  the  arts  or  the  humaner  letters  was  a 
priestcraft  and  of  itself  consecrated  its  earnest  votary. 
Nowadays  .  .  . 

Last  week  upon  three  memorable  days  I  had  for  me 
three  memorable  conversations.  On  the  Saturday  I 
was  sitting  in  Kensington  Gardens  with  a  young 
French  student  of  letters,  and  after  we  had  conversed 
for  sufficiently  long  for  the  timid  young  man  to  allow 
himself  a  familiarity  he  said: 

"Now  tell  me  why  it  is  that  all  your  English  novel- 
ists so  desperately  desire  to  be  politicians  ?" 

This  seemed  to  him  to  be  an  astonishing  and  un- 
reasonable, and  even  a  slightly  indecent,  state  of 
affairs,  so  that  he  mentioned  it  under  his  breath. 

On  the  next  day,  being  Sunday,  I  had  the  privilege 

117 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

of  being  admitted  into  the  drawing-room  of  a  very 
old  lady  of  distinction.  She  happened,  after  talking 
of  persons  as  long  dead  as  D'Orsay,  to  mention  that 
the  wife  of  a  cabinet  minister  had  come  into  her  draw- 
ing-room on  an  afternoon  shortly  before  and  had  said 
that  she  had  been  present  at  the  first  night  of  a  play. 
This  had  so  enormously  moved  her  that  she  had 
fainted  and  had  been  removed  from  the  theatre  by 
another  cabinet  minister,  a  friend  of  her  husband's. 
This  play  dealt  with  prison  life.  The  scene  which  so 
moved  the  lady  showed  you  a  silent  stage — a  convict 
seated  in  his  cell.  From  a  distance  there  came  the 
sound  of  violently  shaken  metal.  It  was  repeated 
nearer,  it  was  echoed  still  nearer  and  nearer.  And 
then  the  convict,  an  enormous  agitation  reaching  him 
with  all  these  contagious  sounds,  flew  desperately  at 
his  cell  door  and  shook  it  to  the  accompaniment  of 
an  intolerable  jangle  of  iron.  This  scene  of  the 
poor  wretch,  with  his  agonized  nerves  shaken  by  long, 
solitary  confinement,  so  worked  upon  the  sympathetic 
nerves  of  the  cabinet  minister's  wife  that  she  declared 
herself  determined  to  leave  no  stone  unturned  until 
the  prison  laws  of  the  United  Kingdom  were  altered 
infinitely  for  the  more  humane. 

We  have  thus  one  more  instance  of  a  work  of 
literature  which  destroys  whole  methods  of  thought 
and  sweeps  away  whole  existent  systems.  And  this 
play  must  take  its  rank  along  with  Uncle  Toms  Cabin, 
which  destroyed  slavery  in  the  United  States;  along 

118 


PRE-RAPHAELITES    AND    PRISONS 

with  Oliver  Twist,  which  destroyed  the  Poor -Law 
system  in  England ;  with  Don  Quixote,  which  de- 
stroyed chivalry,  or  with  Beaumarchais'  Figaro,  which 
led  in  the  French  Revolution.  But,  as  an  epilogue, 
I  should  like  to  add  my  third  conversation,  which  took 
place  on  a  Monday.  On  that  occasion  I  was  afforded 
the  privilege  of  talking  for  a  long  time  with  a  convict 
— a  gentleman  on  the  face  of  him — one  of  the  most 
degenerate  Irish  Cockneys  that  our  modern  civiliza- 
tion could  bless  us  with.  In  his  queer  uniform  of 
mustard-color  and  blue,  this  odd,  monstrous  little 
chap,  with  a  six  days'  beard  and  a  face  like  that  of  a 
wizened  monkey,  trotted  beside  me  and  uttered  words 
of  wisdom.  He  told  me  many  interesting  things.  Thus, 
being  a  criminal  of  the  lowest  type,  he  was  a  Roman 
Catholic,  and  he  enlarged  upon  the  hardships  that 
prisoners  of  his  religion  had  to  put  up  with  in  gaol. 
Thus,  for  instance,  one  of  the  two  meat  courses  which 
prisoners  are  allowed  during  the  week  falls  upon 
Friday,  and  the  poor  Papists  do  not  eat  meat  upon 
Fridays.  Or,  again,  Roman  Catholic  prisoners  are 
not  allowed  the  enormous  luxury  of  a  daily  religious 
service,  and  readers  of  Mr.  Cunningham  Grahame's 
prison  experiences  will  realize  how  enormous  this 
deprivation  is.  With  its  hours  giving  possibilities 
of  conversation,  of  joining  in  the  hoarsely  roared 
Psalms,  and  of  meeting  under  the  shadow  of  God 
Almighty  even  the  warder's  eyes  on  some  sort  of 
equality,  there  are  few  occasions  of  joy  more  absolute 

119 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

,  in  the  life  of  a  convict  or  of  any  man.  Yet  these 
deprivations  my  friend  Hennessy  cheerfully  suffered, 
and,  talking  of  a  prisoner  called  Flaherty,  who  had 
written  himself  down  a  Protestant  in  order  to  earn 
these  extra  privileges,  Mr.  Hennessy  said  in  tones  of 
the  deepest  reprobation:  "I  call  that  a  poor  sort  of 
conjuring  trick!"  And,  spitting  out  a  piece  of  oakum 
that  he  had  been  chewing,  he  repeated  in  abstracted 
tones,  "A  b poor  kind  of  conjuring  trick!" 

Mr.  Hennessy,  you  will  observe,  was  the  worst  type 
of  criminal,  the  greater  part  of  his  life  having  been 
spent  on  "the  Scrubbs,"  as  the  prisoners  call  it  when 
they  are  talking  among  themselves,  or  "in  the  cruel 
place,"  as  they  say  when  they  are  being  interviewed 
by  gentle  philanthropists.  Mr.  Hennessy  pulled 
another  small  piece  of  oakum  from  the  lining  of  his 
waistcoat,  which  boasted  a  broad  arrow  upon  either 
chest,  and  proceeded  to  soliloquize: 

"Cor!"  he  said,  "it  do  do  you  blooming  good  to  be 
in  this  blooming  hotel.  It  soaks  the  beer  out  of  you. 
Reg'lar  soaks  the  beer  out  of  you.  When  you've  bin 
in  'ere  free  days,  you  feels  another  man.  Soaks  the 
beer  out  of  you,  that's  what  it  does." 

He  proceeded  upon  the  old  line,  harking  back  upon 
his  thoughts: 

"A  poor  sort  of  conjuring  trick,  that's  what  it  is. 
And  I  guess  God  A'mighty  looks  after  us.  He  sends 
the  b sparrows." 

For  the  sparrows,  recognizing  the  chapel  time  of 

120 


PRE-RAPHAELITES    AND    PRISONS 

the  Protestants,  are  accustomed  to  fly  in  at  the  cell 
windows  while  chapel  is  on  and  to  search  the  cell  for 
crumbs.  And  if  by  chance  they  find  a  Catholic  there 
they  do  not  seem  to  mind  him  very  much.  My  friend 
Hennessy,  indeed,  had  a  "b—  •  sparrow"  that 
would  come  and  perch  upon  his  forefinger,  and  this 
appeared  to  afford  him  as  much  gratification  as  if  he 
had  earned  all  the  profits  of  his  poor  sort  of  conjur- 
ing trick.  It  afforded  him  much  solace,  too,  since 
it  appeared  to  him  a  visible  sign  from  the  Almighty 
that  He  who  disregardeth  not  the  fall  of  a  sparrow 
could,  by  means  of  that  little  bird,  find  means  and 
leisure  to  solace  him  while  he  suffered  from  sectarian 
injustice.  For  this  sectarian  inequality  would  pursue 
my  friend  Hennessy  even  when  he  left  the  gaol  gates, 
the  Protestant  chaplain  being  provided  with  a  sum 
of  money  wherewith  to  pay  the  fares  home  of  departed 
prisoners,  to  furnish  them  with  boots,  and  even  to  set 
them  up  in  costers'  stalls.  "  Flaherty,"  Mr.  Hennessy 
said,  "he'll  get  his  blooming  half-crown  or  free-and- 
six,  but  our  blooming  priest,  he's  as  poor  as  meself." 

And  Mr.  Hennessy  once  more  spat  reflectively,  and 
added:  "But  I  call  it  a  poor  sort  of  conjuring  trick." 

Considering  the  opportunity  an  excellent  one  for 
getting  information,  I  proceeded  to  describe  as  vividly 
as  I  could  the  scene  from  the  play  that  I  have  men- 
tioned— the  scene  which  had  made  the  cabinet  min- 
ister's wife  faint,  the  scene  which  had  so  drastically 
altered  the  prison  laws  of  the  United  Kingdom.  Mr. 

121 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

Hennessy  listened  to  me  with  an  air  somewhat  resem- 
bling philosophic  disgust. 

"Cor!"  he  said.  He  crooked  his  two  forefingers 
one  into  the  other,  and  drew  my  attention  to 
them. 

"  D'ye  know  what  that  means,  sor  ?"  he  asked. 

I  said  I  didn't,  and  he  continued:  "It  means 
Flanagan's  trick.  When  we  make  that  sign  to  each 
other  at  exercise  it  means  that  every  man  jack  in  gaol 
will  shake  his  door  after  lights-out.  If  you  all  make 
the  row  together,  the  b—  -  bloaters  can't  spot  any 
one  of  you,  and  they  can't  have  the  whole  b — 
prison  up  before  Dot  and  Dash  in  the  morning.  It's 
the  fun  of  yer  life  to  hear  the  bloaters  curse." 

The  "bloaters"  are,  of  course,  the  warders,  and 
Dot  and  Dash  was  the  nickname  for  the  governor  of 
this  particular  gaol,  since  one  of  his  legs  was  slightly 
shorter  than  the  other,  and  he  walked  unequally. 

Thus,  "the  fun  of  yer  life,"  invented  by  the  im- 
mortal Flanagan,  whoever  he  was,  and  celebrated  by 
my  excellent  friend  Mr.  Hennessy,  becomes  the 
epoch-making  scene  of  a  drama  which  changes  the  law 
of  an  empire.  I  have  no  particular  comment  to  make, 
being  a  simple  writer,  recording  things  that  have  come 
under  my  own  observation,  but  I  should  like  to  put 
on  record,  as  linking  up  the  "  c onstatation  "  of  what  may 
otherwise  appear  an  extremely  loose  dissertation,  my 
reply  to  my  young  friend  the  Frenchman,  who,  with 
his  eyes  veiled,  as  if  he  were  asking  a  rather  obscene 

122 


PRE-RAPHAELITES    AND    PRISONS 

question,  had  put  it  to  me:  "Is  it  true,  then,  that  all 
you  English  novelists  desire  to  be  politicians  ?" 

I  answered  that  it  was  entirely  true,  and  the  reason 
was  that  in  England  a  writer,  not  being  regarded  as  a 
gentleman,  except  in  the  speech  of  the  cabinet  minister 
who  may  happen  to  reply  to  the  toast  of  Literature 
at  a  Royal  Academy  banquet,  or  if  he  happens  to  sit 
upon  a  jury,  when  he  becomes  ipso  facto  one  of  the 
"gentlemen"  to  whom  learned  counsel  yearningly 
addresses  himself — in  England  all  writers  being  well 
aware  that  they  are  not  regarded  as  gentlemen,  and, 
indeed,  aware  that  they  are  hardly  regarded  as  men, 
since  we  must  consider  the  practitioners  of  all  the  arts 
as  at  least  effeminate,  if  not  a  decent  kind  of  eunuch — 
all  writers  in  England  desire  to  be  something  else  as 
well.  Sometimes,  anxious  to  assert  their  manhood, 
they  cultivate  small  holdings,  sail  the  seas,  hire  out 
fishing  -  boats,  travel  in  caravans,  engage  in  county 
cricket,  or  become  justices  of  the  peace.  I  related 
to  my  young  French  friend  how,  one  day,  it  being  my 
great  privilege  to  lunch  with  the  gentleman  whom  I 
consider  to  be  the  finest  writer  of  English  in  the  world, 
the  man  possessing  the  most  limpid,  the  most  pure, 
the  most  beautiful  of  English  styles,  I  happened 
modestly  and  bashfully  to  express  my  opinion  of 
his  works  to  the  great  man.  He  turned  upon 
me  with  an  extraordinary  aquiline  fury  and  ex- 
claimed: 

"Stylist!  Me  a  stylist?  Stevenson  was  a  stylist, 
9  123 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

Pater  was  a  stylist.  I  have  no  time  for  that  twiddling 
nonsense.  I'm  a  coleopterist." 

And  there,  as  I  explained  to  my  young  French 
friend,  you  have  the  whole  thing  in  a  nutshell.  This 
great  writer  had  the  strongest  possible  objection  to 
being  classed  with  a  tuberculous  creature  like  Steven- 
son, or  with  an  Oxford  don  like  Pater.  He  wanted 
to  be  remembered  as  one  who  had  chased  danger- 
ous reptiles — if  coleoptera  are  dangerous  reptiles! — 
through  the  frozen  forests  of  Labrador  to  the  icy 
recesses  of  the  Pole  itself.  He  wanted  to  be  remem- 
bered as  a  man,  a  sort  of  creature  once  removed 
from  an  orang-outang,  who  smote  a  hairy  breast 
and  roared  defiance  to  the  rough  places  of  the  earth. 
So  that  some  of  us  plough  the  seas;  some  of  us  dig  up 
potatoes;  some  of  us  jump  the  blind  baggage  on 
transcontinental  trains  in  the  United  States  of  America; 
some  of  us  are  miners,  and  some  of  us  open  rifle- 
ranges;  some  of  us  keep  goats;  others  indulge  in 
apiculture — but  by  far  the  most  of  us  desire  to  be 
influences. 

"And  I  assure  you,  my  dear  young  friend,"  I  said 
to  the  Frenchman,  "this  is  a  very  great  temptation. 
L'autre  jour  j'etais  assis  dans  un  club  litteraire — I  was 
seated  in  a  literary  club,  conversing  with  some  of 
messieurs  mes  confreres,  when  there  entered  a  young 
man  like  yourself — very  much  like  yourself,  but 
not  so  modest.  We  were  drinking  tea.  Yes,  my 
young  friend,  in  England  all  the  literary  men  drink, 

124 


PRE-RAPHAELITES    AND    PRISONS 

not  absinthe,  nor  orgeat,  nor  bocks,  nor  even  chassis, 
but  tea.  And  this  young  man  who  entered,  being 
young,  with  great  confidence,  contradicted  every 
single  word  that  was  uttered  by  my  distinguished 
confreres,  but  more  particularly  every  single  word 
that  was  uttered  by  myself.  He  contradicted  me,  in- 
deed, before  I  could  get  my  words  out  at  all,  and 
I  felt  very  refreshed  and  happy,  for  it  is  very 
pleasant  when  the  extremely  young  treat  one  still  as 
an  equal.  But  it  happened  that  one  of  my  distin- 
guished confreres,  possessed  of  a  loud  and  distinct 
organ,  pronounced  my  name  so  that  it  could  not 
escape  the  ears  of  this  young  man,  who,  until  that 
moment,  did  not  know  who  I  was.  He  was  lift- 
ing a  cup  of  tea  to  his  mouth,  and  —  it  struck  me 
as  an  extraordinary  fact — the  cup  of  tea  remained 
suspended  between  mouth  and  saucer  for  an  im- 
mensely long  period  of  time.  The  young  man's  eyes 
became  enormous;  his  jaws  fell  open,  and  he  remained 
silent.  The  conversation  drifted  on.  He  succeeded 
in  drinking  his  tea  eventually,  but  still — he  remained 
silent.  My  honored  confreres  one  by  one  went  away 
on  their  errands  to  make,  each  one,  the  world  a  little 
better.  I  remained  alone  with  our  silent  young  friend, 
and  at  last,  making  my  decent  excuses,  I  rose  to  go. 
Suddenly  this  young  man  sprang  up  and,  formally 
addressing  me  by  name,  he  brought  out  in  rather 
trembling  tones: 

"  *  I  want  to  thank  you  for  all  you've  done  for  me/ 

125 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

"'My  God!'  I  ejaculated,  'What  is  all  this  ?  What 
have  I  done  for  you  ?' 

"'You  have/  he  answered,  'by  your  writings  in- 
fluenced my  whole  life.' 

"  I  was  so  overwhelmed,  I  was  so  appalled,  I  was  so 
extraordinarily  confused,  that  I  bolted  out  of  the  room. 
I  did  not,  my  young  French  friend,  know  in  the  least 
what  to  do  with  this  singular  present.  And  I  am  bound 
to  say  that  in  about  five  minutes  I  felt  extraordinarily 
pleased. 

"  I  had  never  been  so  pleased  before  in  my  life. 
One  kind  writer  once  said  that  I  wrote  as  preciously 
—though  I  was  not,  of  course,  half  as  important — 
as  the  late  Robert  Louis  Stevenson!  Another  kindly 
editor  once  told  me  to  my  face  that  he  considered 
me  to  be  the  finest  novelist  in  England.  He  added 

O 

that  there  was  only  one  person  who  was  my  equal,  and 
that,  the  latest  literary  knight !  That,  my  young 
French  friend,  was  a  present  whose  flavor  you  will 
hardly  appreciate. 

"But,  kurz  und  gut,  I  have  had  my  triumphs. 
Yet  never — no,  never,  till  that  moment — had  I  been 
called  an  influence.  Oh  yes,  the  pleasure  was  extra- 
ordinary. I  walked  through  the  streets  as  if  I  were 
dancing  on  air;  never  had  the  world  looked  so  good. 
I  imagined  that  my  words  must  be  heard  deferentially 
in  the  War  Office,  which  I  was  then  passing,  and  I 
proceeded  to  walk  down  Downing  Street  to  look  at 
the  several  ministries,  where,  obviously,  my  words 

126 


PRE-RAPHAELITES    AND    PRISONS 

must  have  immense  weight.  Very  nearly  I  sent  in 
my  card  to  the  Foreign  Minister  with  the  view  of 
giving  him  my  opinions  on  the  relations  between 
England  and  Germany. 

"In  the  green  park,  continuing  my  walk  home,  I 
said  to  myself,  I  am  an  influence!  By  God!  I  am  an 
influence  like  A  and  B  and  C  and  D  and  E  and  F  and 
G  and  H,  and  like  all  of  them — all  of  them  influences. 

"  I  felt  as  important  as  the  Pope  must  have 
done  when  he  penned  the  encyclical  'Pascendi  Gre- 
gqs.'  I  was  astounded  that  no  one  turned  round  in 
awe  to  observe  my  passing  by.  The  sweetest  moment 
in  my  life!  .  .  . 

"Of  course  reaction  came.  It  could  not  have 
been  otherwise,  since  I  was  brought  up  in  the  back 
rooms  and  nurseries  of  Pre-Raphaelism,  which,  for 
better  or  for  worse,  held  that  to  be  an  artist  was  to 
be  the  most  august  thing  in  life.  And  nowadays 
I  seldom  think  of  that  sweet  moment.  Only  when  I 
am  very  drunk,  indeed,  deep,  deep  drunk  in  tea,  do 
I  remember  that  once  for  five  minutes  I  looked  upon 
myself  as  an  influence. 

"Being  a  man  of  enormous  moral  integrity  (my 
young  French  friend,  you  came  of  a  nation  inferior  and 
unacquainted  with  the  sterner  virtues) — being  a  man 
of  an  enormous  moral  integrity — or  being  a  low-spirited 
sort  of  person  —  I  have  resolutely  put  from  me  this 
temptation,  or,  if  you  will,  I  have  never  had  the 
courage  again  to  aspire  to  these  dizzy  heights. 

127 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

"But  now  I  can  well  understand  why  it  is  that  my 
distinguished  confreres  A,  B,  C,  D,  and  all  the  rest 
of  the  letters  of  the  alphabet,  aspire  to  the  giddy 
heights  of  power.  For,  figure  to  yourself,  my  dear 
young  French  friend,  how  I,  the  mere  writer,  de- 
spisedly  walk  the  streets.  But  should  I  just  once  take 
up  the  cause,  let  us  say  of  my  oppressed  friend 
Hennessy,  at  once  all  sorts  of  doors  and  all  sorts  of 
columns  would  be  open  to  me.  The  Times  would  print 
my  letters;  I  should  be  admitted  into  the  private 
room  of  whatever  cabinet  minister  it  was  that  had 
Hennessy  in  his  charge.  I  would,  yes,  by  heavens! 
I  would  make  that  cabinet  minister's  wife  not  only 
faint,  but  go  into  three  separate  fits  of  hysterics  by 
my  grewsome  accounts  of  Hennessy's  wrongs.  I 
should  dine  with  archbishops.  I  should  receive  a 
letter  of  thanks  from  the  Pope.  I  should  event- 
ually triumphantly  contest  the  Scotland  division 
of  Liverpool  and,  becoming  arbitrator  of  the  des- 
tinies of  the  empire,  I  should  be  styled  before  the 
Speaker  of  the  Mother  of  Parliaments  not  only  a 
gentleman,  but,  by  heavens,  an  honorable  gentle- 
man! ..." 

At  this  point  of  my  rhapsody  we  were  approached 
by  an  official,  and,  on  his  refusal  to  believe  that  we 
had  already  paid  for  our  chairs,  we  were  summarily 
ejected. 

Now,  do  not  let  me  be  suspected  of  preaching  a 
campaign  to  the  effect  that  the  writer  should  stick  to 

128 


PRE-RAPHAELITES    AND    PRISONS 

his  pen.  I  am  merely  anxious  to  emphasize  the  lights 
and  shadows  of  Pre-Raphaelite  days  by  contrasting 
them  with  the  very  changed  conditions  that  to-day 
prevail.  You  might  say,  on  the  one  hand,  our  poets 
are  now  influences,  and  that,  on  the  other,  they  no 
longer  get  checks.  And  you  might  continue  the  pros 
and  cons  to  the  end  of  the  chapter.  Nor  do  I  wish 
to  say  that  the  author  ought  to  steel  his  heart  against 
the  wrongs  of  suffering  humanity  or  of  the  brute 
creation.  By  all  means,  if  he  shall  observe  individual 
examples  of  the  oppressed  and  of  the  suffering — poor 
devils  like  my  friend  Hennessy,  or  the  miserable  horses 
that  we  export  to  Belgium — let  him  do  his  best  to 
alleviate  their  unhappy  lot.  But  these  the  old-fash- 
ioned Pre-Raphaelite  would  have  said  are  the  func- 
tions of  the  artist  as  private  citizen.  His  art  is 
something  more  mysterious  and  something  more 
sacred.  As  I  have  elsewhere  pointed  out,  my  grand- 
father, a  romantic  old  gentleman  of  the  Tory  per- 
suasion by  predisposition,  was  accustomed  to  express 
himself  as  being  advanced  in  the  extreme  in  his  ideas. 
Such  was  his  pleasant  fancy  that  I  am  quite  certain 
he  would  have  sported  a  red  tie  had  it  not  clashed 
with  the  blue  linen  shirts  that  he  habitually  wrore. 
And,  similarly,  my  Aunt  Rossetti,  to  whom  my  infant 
thoughts  were  so  frequently  intrusted — this  energetic 
and  romantic  lady  was  of  such  advanced  ideas  that  I 
have  heard  her  regret  that  she  was  not  born  early 
enough  to  be  able  to  wet  her  handkerchief  in  the  blood 

129 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

of  the  aristocrats  during  the  French  Reign  of  Terror. 
Nay,  more,  during  that  splendid  youth  of  the  world 
in  the  eighties  and  nineties,  the  words  "the  Social 
Revolution"  were  forever  on  our  lips.  We  spoke 
of  it  as  if  it  were  always  just  around  the  corner,  like 
the  three-horse  omnibus  which  used  to  run  from 
Portland  Place  to  Charing  Cross  Station — a  bulky 
conveyance  which  we  used  to  regard  with  longing 
eyes  as  being  eminently  fitted,  if  it  were  upset,  to  form 
the  very  breastwork  of  a  barricade — in  these  young, 
splendid,  and  stern  days  my  cousins,  the  Rossettis, 
aided,  if  not  pushed  to  it,  by  my  energetic,  romantic 
aunt,  founded  that  celebrated  anarchist  organ  known 
as  The  Torch.  But,  though  my  grandfather  hankered 
after  wearing  a  red  tie,  said  that  all  lords  were  damned 
flunkeys,  that  all  her  Majesty's  judges  were  venkJXje' 
scoundrels,  all  police  magistrates  worse  than  Judas 
Iscariot,  and  all  policemen  worse  even  than  Royal 
Academicians — it  would  never,  no,  it  would  never 
have  entered  his  head  to  turn  one  of  his  frescoes  in 
the  Town  Hall,  Manchester,  into  a  medium  for  the 
propaganda  of  the  Social  Revolution.  He  hated  the 
bourgeoisie  with  a  proper  hatred,  but  it  was  the  tra- 
ditional hatred  of  the  French  artist.  The  bourgeoisie 
returned  his  hatred  to  more  purpose,  for,  just  before 
his  death,  the  Town  Council  of  Manchester,  with  the 
Lord  Mayor  at  its  head,  sitting  in  private,  put  for- 
ward a  resolution  that  his  frescoes  in  the  Town  Hall 
should  be  whitewashed  out  and  their  places  taken  by 

130 


PRE-RAPHAELITES    AND    PRISONS 

advertisements  of  the  wares  of  the  aldermen  and  the 
councillors.  Thus  perished  Ford  Madox  Brown — for 
this  resolution,  which  was  forwarded  to  him,  gave 
him  his  fatal  attack  of  apoplexy.  The  bourgeoisie 
had  triumphed. 

Or,  again,  Madox  Brown,  in  his  picturesque  desire 
to  champion  the  oppressed,  once  took  up  the  cause  of 
a  Royal  Academician.  This  poor  gentleman,  having 
grown  extremely  old,  and  being  entirely  color-blind, 
so  that  he  painted  pictures  containing  green  heads  and 
blue  hands,  was  no  longer  permitted  by  his  brothers 
of  the  Immortal  Forty  to  occupy  with  his  work  the 
one  hundred  and  forty  feet  on  the  line  that  are  allotted 
to  every  Academician  at  Burlington  House.  Madox 
Brown  entered  into  the  fray  for  redressing  the  wrongs 
of  this  injured  and  color-blind  person.  He  wrote 
articles  about  Mr.  D.  in  the  late  Mr.  Quilter's  Uni- 
versal Review.  He  deluged  the  Times  with  letters 
in  which  he  said  that,  "though  dog  does  not  eat  dog, 
the  Academic  vulture  was  ready  to  feed  on  its  own 
carrion."  He  trundled  off  in  four-wheelers  to  inter- 
view the  art  critic  of  almost  every  daily  paper  in 
London.  Indeed,  I  never  remember  such  a  row 
in  that  picturesque  household  as  was  caused  by  the 
sorrows  of  this  unfortunate  Academician.  But  it 
never,  no,  it  never  entered  Madox  Brown's  head  to 
paint  a  gigantic  picture  representing  all  the  Forty 
Academicians  gorging  enormously  on  turkeys,  walnuts, 
and  pork,  while  outside  the  walls  of  Burlington  House 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

in  a  winter  night,  with  the  snow  four  feet  thick,  the 
unfortunate  D.,  with  placards  bearing  the  words 
"Color  Blind"  on  his  chest,  and  his  bony  shoulders 
sticking  through  his  ragged  clothes,  drew  in  chalks 
upon  the  pavement  exquisite  classical  pictures  whose 
heads  were  green  and  whose  hands  were  blue.  This, 
however,  was  what  William  Morris,  breaking  away 
from  his  dyes  and  his  tapestries,  taught  the  young 
artist  to  do. 


VII 

ANARCHISTS   AND    GRAY    FRIEZE 

PHE  art  with  which  William  Morris  and  such 
*  disciples  of  his  as  Commendatore  Walter  Crane 
propagandized  on  behalf  of  that  splendid  thing,  the 
"Social  Revolution,"  was,  upon  the  whole,  still  within 
the  canons  which  would  have  been  allowed  by  the 
aesthetes  who  called  themselves  Pre-Raphaelites.  In 
his  News  from  Nowhere  Morris  tried  to  show  us 
young  things  what  a  beautiful  world  we  should  make 
of  it  if  sedulously  we  attended  the  Sunday  evening 
lectures  at  Kelmscott  House,  the  Mall,  Hammer- 
smith. At  Kelmscott  House,  I  believe,  the  first  electric 
telegraph  was  constructed,  and  it  was  in  the  shed 
where  the  first  cable  was  made  that  we  used  to  meet 
to  hasten  on  the  Social  Revolution  and  to  recon- 
struct a  lovely  world.  As  far  as  I  remember  those 
young  dreams,  it  was  to  be  all  a  matter  of  huge- 
limbed  and  splendid  women,  striding  along  dressed 
in  loose  curtain  -  serge  garments,  and  bearing  upon 
the  one  arm  such  sheaves  of  wheat  as  never  were  and, 
upon  the  other,  such  babies  as  every  proud  mother 
imagines  her  first  baby  to  be.  And  on  Sunday  after- 

133 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

noons,  in  a  pleasant  lamplight,  to  a  number  per- 
haps of  a  hundred  and  fifty,  there  we  used  to  gather 
in  that  shed.  William  Morris  would  stride  up  and 
down  between  the  aisles,  pushing  his  hands  with  a 
perpetual,  irate  movement  through  his  splendid  hair. 
And  we,  the  young  men  with  long  necks,  long,  fair 
hair,  protruding  blue  eyes,  and  red  ties,  or  the  young 
maidens  in  our  blue  curtain  serge  with  our  round 
shoulders,  our  necks  made  as  long  as  possible  to 
resemble  Rossetti  drawings,  uttered  with  rapt  ex- 
pression long  sentences  about  the  Social  Revolution 
that  was  just  round  the  corner.  We  thought  we  were 
beautiful,  we  thought  we  were  very  beautiful;  but  Pre- 
Raphaelism  is  dead,  aestheticism  is  dead.  Poor  Will- 
iam Morris  is  very  dead,  too,  and  the  age  when  poetry 
was  marketable  is  most  dead  of  all.  It  is  dead,  all 
dead,  and  that  beautiful  vision,  the  Social  Revolution, 
has  vanished  along  with  the  'bus  that  used  to  run 
from  the  Langham  Hotel,  beloved  of  American  visit- 
ors, to  Charing  Cross — the  'bus  with  its  three  horses 
abreast,  its  great  length,  and  its  great  umbrella  per- 
manently fixed  above  the  driver's  head.  Alas!  that 
'bus  will  serve  to  build  up  no  barricade  when  the 
ultimate  revolution  comes,  and  when  it  comes  the 
ultimate  revolution  will  not  be  our  beloved  Social  one 
of  the  large  women,  curtain  serge,  wheat-sheaves,  and 
the  dream  babies.  No,  it  will  be  different.  And,  I 
suppose,  the  fine  flower  that  those  days  produced 
is  none  other  than  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw. 

'34 


WILLIAM       MORRIS 


ANARCHISTS    AND    GRAY    FRIEZE 

But  in  those  days  we  had  no  thought  of  Fabianism. 
Nevertheless,  we  managed  to  get  up  some  pretty  tidy 
rows  among  ourselves.  I  must,  personally,  have  had 
three  separate  sets  of  political  opinions.  To  irritate 
my  relatives,  who  advocated  advanced  thought,  I 
dimly  remember  that  I  professed  myself  a  Tory. 
Among  the  bourgeoisie,  whom  it  was  my  inherited 
duty  to  epater,  I  passed  for  a  dangerous  anarchist. 

^^^ 

In  general  speech,  manner  and  appearance  I  must 
have  resembled  a  socialist  of  the  Morris  group.  I 
don't  know  what  I  was;  I  don't  know  what  I  am. 
It  doesn't,  I  suppose,  matter  in  the  least,  but  I  fancy 
I  must  have  been  a  very  typical  young  man  of  the  sort 
who  formed  the  glorious  meetings  that  filled  the  world 
in  the  eighties  and  early  nineties.  There  used  to  be 
terrific  rows  between  socialists  and  anarchists  in  those 
days.  I  think  I  must  have  been  on  the 'side  of  the 
anarchists,  because  the  socialists  were  unreasonably 
aggressive.  They  were  always  holding  meetings,  at 
which  the  subject  for  debate  would  be:  "The  Foolish- 
ness of  Anarchism."  This  would  naturally  annoy  the 
harmless  and  gentle  anarchists,  who  only  wanted  to 
be  let  alone,  to  loaf  in  Goodge  Street,  and  to  victimize 
any  one  who  came  into  the  offices  of  The  Torch  and 
had  half-a-crown  to  spend  on  beer. 

In  The  Torch  office,  which,  upon  the  death  of  my 
aunt  Rossetti,  left  the  house  of  William  Rossetti, 
you  would  generally  find  some  dirty,  eloquent  scoun- 
drel called  Ravachol  or  Vaillant  who,  for  the  price  of 

135 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

a  pint  of  beer,  would  pour  forth  so  enormous  a  flood 
of  invective  and  of  self-glorification  that  you  would 
not  believe  him  capable  of  hurting  a  rabbit.  Then,  a 
little  afterward,  you  would  hear  of  a  bomb  thrown 
in  Barcelona  or  Madrid,  and  Ravachol  or  Vaillant, 
still  eloquent  and  still  attitudinizing,  would  go  to  his 
death  under  the  guillotine  or  in  the  garrote.  I  don't 
know  where  the  crowds  came  from  that  supported 
us  as  anarchists,  but  I  have  seldom  seen  a  crowd  so 
great  as  that  which  attended  the  funeral  of  the  poor 
idiot  who  blew  himself  to  pieces  in  the  attempt  on 
Greenwich  Observatory.  This  was,  of  course,  an 
attempt  fomented  by  the  police  agents  of  a  foreign 
state  with  a  view  to  forcing  the  hand  of  the  British 
Government.  The  unfortunate  idiot  was  talked  by 
these  agents  provocateurs  into  taking  a  bomb  to  Green- 
wich Park,  where  the  bomb  exploded  in  his  pocket 
and  blew  him  into  many  small  fragments.  The  idea 
of  the  government  in  question  was  that  this  would 
force  the  hand  of  the  British  Government  so  that 
they  would  arrest  wholesale  every  anarchist  in  Great 
Britain.  Of  course,  the  British  Government  did  noth- 
ing of  the  sort,  and  the  crowd  in  Tottenham  Court  Road 
which  attended  the  funeral  of  the  small  remains  of  the 
victim  was,  as  I  have  said,  one  of  the  largest  that  I 
have  ever  seen.  Who  were  they  all  ?  Where  did  they 
all  come  from  ?  Whither  have  they  all  disappeared  ? 
I  am  sure  I  don't  know,  just  as  I  am  pretty  certain 
that,  in  all  those  thousands  who  filled  Tottenham 

136 


ANARCHISTS    AND    GRAY    FRIEZE 

Court  Road,  there  was  not  one  who  wTas  more  capable 
than  myself  of  beginning  to  think  of  throwing  a  bomb. 
I  suppose  it  was  the  spirit  of  romance,  of  youth,  per- 
haps of  sheer  tomfoolery,  perhaps  of  the  spirit  of 
adventure,  which  is  no  longer  very  easy  for  men  to 
find  in  our  world  of  gray  and  teeming  cities.  I  couldn't 
be  Dick  Harkaway  with  a  Winchester  rifle,  so  I  took 
it  out  in  monstrous  solemn  fun,  of  the  philosophic 
anarchist  kind,  and  I  was  probably  one  of  twenty 
thousand.  My  companion  upon  this  occasion  was 
Comrade  P.,  who,  until  quite  lately,  might  be  observed 
in  the  neighborhood  of  the  British  Museum — a  man 
with  an  immensely  long  beard,  with  immensely  long 
hair,  bareheaded,  bare-legged,  in  short  running  draw- 
ers, and  a  boatman's  jersey,  that  left  bare  his  arms  and 
chest.  Comrade  P.  was  a  medical  man  of  great  skill, 
an  eminently  philosophic  anarchist.  He  was  so 
advanced  in  his  ideas  that  he  dispensed  with  animal 
food,  dispensed  with  alcohol,  and  intensely  desired  to 
dispense  with  all  clothing.  This  brought  him  many 
times  into  collision  with  the  police,  and  as  many  times 
he  was  sent  to  prison  for  causing  a  crowd  to  assemble 
in  Hyde  Park,  where  he  would  appear  to  all  intents 
and  purposes  in  a  state  of  nature.  He  lived,  however, 
entirely  upon  crushed  nuts.  Prison  diet,  which 
appeared  to  him  sinfully  luxurious,  inevitably  upset 
his  digestion.  They  would  place  him  in  the  infirmary 
and  would  feed  him  on  boiled  chicken,  jellies,  beef-tea, 
and  caviare,  and  all  the  while  he  would  cry  out  for 

J37 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

nuts,  and  grow  worse  and  worse,  the  prison  doctors 
regularly  informing  him  that  nuts  were  poison.  At 
last  Comrade  P.  would  be  upon  the  point  of  death, 
and  then  they  would  give  him  nuts.  P.  would  immedi- 
ately recover,  usually  about  the  time  that  his  sentence 
had  expired.  Then,  upon  the  Sunday,  he  would 
once  more  appear  like  a  Greek  athlete  running 
through  Hyde  Park.  A  most  learned  and  gentle 
person,  most  entertaining,  and  the  best  of  company, 
this  was  still  the  passion  of  his  life.  The  books  in  the 
British  Museum  were  almost  a  necessity  of  his  exis- 
tence, yet  he  would  walk  into  the  reading  -  room 
attired  only  in  a  blanket,  which  he  would  hand  to 
the  cloak-room  attendant,  asking  for  a  check  in  re- 
turn. Eventually  his  reader's  ticket  was  withdrawn, 
though  with  reluctance  on  the  part  of  the  authorities, 
for  he  was  a  fine  scholar,  and  they  very  humane 
men.  Some  time  after  this  Comrade  P.  proposed  to 
me  that  I  should  accompany  him  on  the  top  of  a  'bus. 
His  idea  was  that  he  would  be  attired  in  a  long  ulster; 
this  he  would  take  off  and  hand  to  me,  whereupon  I 
was  to  get  down  and  leave  him  in  this  secure  position. 
My  courage  was  insufficient — the  united  courages  of 
all  Comrade  P.'s  friends  were  insufficient  to  let  them 
aid  him  in  giving  thus  early  a  demonstration  of  what 
nowadays  we  call  the  Simple  Life,  and  Comrade  P. 
had  to  sacrifice  his  overcoat.  He  threw  it,  that  is  to 
say,  from  the  top  of  the  'bus,  and,  with  his  hair  and 
beard  streaming  over  his  uncovered  frame,  defied  alike 

138 


ANARCHISTS    AND    GRAY    FRIEZE 

the  elements  and  the  police.  The  driver  took  the 
'bus,  Comrade  P.  and  all  into  an  empty  stable,  where 
they  locked  him  up  until  the  police  arrived  with  a 
stretcher  from  Bow  Street.  At  last  the  magistrate 
before  whom  Comrade  P.  habitually  appeared  grew 
tired  of  sentencing  him.  Comrade  P.  was,  moreover, 
so  evidently  an  educated  and  high-minded  man  that 
the  stipendiary  perhaps  was  touched  by  his  steadfast- 
ness. At  all  events,  he  invited  P.  to  dinner — I  don't 
know  what  clothes  P.  wore  upon  this  occasion.  Over 
this  friendly  meal  he  extracted  from  P.  a  promise 
that  he  would  wear  the  costume  of  running-drawers, 

O  7 

an  oarsman's  jersey,  and  sandals  which  I  have  already 
described,  and  which  the  magistrate  himself  designed. 
Nothing  would  have  persuaded  P.  to  give  this  promise 
had  not  the  magistrate  promised  in  return  to  get  for 
P.  the  reader's  ticket  at  the  British  Museum  which 
he  had  forfeited.  And  so,  for  many  years,  in  this 
statutory  attire  P.,  growing  grayer  and  grayer,  might 
be  seen  walking  about  the  streets  of  Bloomsbury. 
Some  years  afterward,  when  I  occupied  a  cottage  in 
the  country,  P.  wrote  and  asked  to  be  permitted  to 
live  in  my  garden  in  a  state  of  nature.  But,  dreading 
the  opinions  of  my  country  neighbors,  I  refused,  and 
that  was  the  last  I  heard  of  him. 

What   with    poets,  arts   and  craftsmen,  anarchists, 

dock-strikes,    unemployed    riots    and    demonstrations 

in   Trafalgar   Square,    those   years   were   very   lively 

and   stirring   for   the   young.      We   continued   to   be 

10  139 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

cranks  in  a  high-spirited  and  tentative  manner. 
Nowadays,  what  remains  of  that  movement  seems  to 
have  become  much  more  cut  and  dried;  to  have 
become  much  more  theoretic;  to  know  much  more 
and  to  get  much  less  fun  out  of  it.  You  have,  on  the 
one  hand,  the  Fabian  Society,  and,  on  the  other,  the 
Garden  Cities,  where  any  number  of  Comrade  P.'s 
can  be  accommodated.  The  movement  has  probably 
spread  numerically,  but  it  has  passed  as  a  factor  out 
of  the  life  of  the  day.  I  don't  know  what  killed  it. 

As  far  as  I  am  personally  concerned,  my  interest 
seemed  to  wane  at  about  the  time  when  there  was  a 
tremendous  row  in  one  of  the  socialist  clubs  because 
some  enthusiastic  gentleman  in  a  red  tie  publicly 
drank  wine  out  of  a  female  convert's  shoe.  Why 
there  should  have  been  a  row,  whether  it  was  wrong 
to  drink  wine,  or  to  drink  it  out  of  a  shoe,  or  what  it 
was  all  about,  I  never  could  quite  make  out.  But  the 
life  appeared  to  die  out  of  things  about  then.  Perhaps 
it  was  about  that  time  that  the  first  Fabian  tract  was 
published.  I  remember  being  present  later  at  a 
Fabian  debate  as  to  the  attributes  of  the  Deity.  I 
forget  what  it  was  all  about,  but  it  lasted  a  very  con- 
siderable time.  Toward  the  end  of  the  meeting  an 
energetic  lady  arose — it  was,  I  think,  her  first  attend- 
ance at  a  Fabian  meeting — and  remarked: 

"All  this  talk  is  very  fine,  but  what  I  want  to  know 
is,  whether  the  Fabian  Society  does,  or  does  not, 
believe  in  God  ?" 

140 


ANARCHISTS    AND    GRAY    FRIEZE 

A  timid  gentleman  rose  and  replied: 

"If  Mrs.  Y.  will  read  Fabian  Tract  312  she  will 
discover  what  she  ought  to  think  upon  this  matter." 

They  had  codified  everything  by  then.  But  in  the 
earliest  days  we  all  wobbled  gloriously.  Thus,  upon 
his  first  coming  to  London,  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  wrote 
a  pamphlet  called  Why  I  Am  an  Anarchist.  This  was,  I 
think,  printed  at  The  Torch  press.  At  any  rate,  the 
young  proprietors  of  that  organ  came  into  possession 
of  a  large  number  of  copies  of  the  pamphlet.  I  have 
twice  seen  Mr.  Shaw  unmanned — three  times  if  I  in- 
clude an  occasion  upon  a  railway  platform  when  a  loco- 
motive outvoiced  him.  One  of  the  other  occasions 
was  when  Mr.  Shaw,  having  advanced  a  stage  further 
toward  his  intellectual  salvation,  was  addressing  in 
the  Park  a  socialist  gathering  on  the  tiresome  text 
of  the  "Foolishness  of  Anarchism."  The  young 
proprietors  of  The  Torch  walked  round  and  round  in 
the  outskirts  of  the  crowd  offering  copies  of  Mr. 
Shaw's  earlier  pamphlet  for  sale,  and  exclaiming  at 
the  top  of  their  voices,  "Why  I  Am  an  Anarchist! 
By  the  lecturer!" 

But  even  in  those  days  Mr.  Shaw  had  us  for  his 
enthusiastic  supporters.  I  suppose  we  did  not  put 
much  money  into  his  pockets,  for  I  well  remember 
his  relating  a  sad  anecdote  whose  date  must  have 
fallen  among  the  eighties.  As  Mr.  Shaw  put  it,  like 
every  poor  young  man  when  he  first  comes  to  London, 
he  possessed  no  presentable  garments  at  all  save  a  suit 

141 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

of  dress  clothes.  In  this  state  he  received  an  invita- 
tion to  a  soiree  from  some  gentleman  high  in  the 
political  world — I  think  it  was  Mr.  Haldane.  This 
gentleman  was  careful  to  add  a  postscript  in  the  kind- 
ness of  his  heart,  begging  Mr.  Shaw  not  to  dress, 
since  every  one  would  be  in  their  morning  clothes. 
Mr.  Shaw  was  accordingly  put  into  an  extraordinary 
state  of  perturbation.  He  pawned  or  sold  all  the 
articles  of  clothing  in  his  possession,  including  his 
evening  suit,  and  with  the  proceeds  purchased  a 
decent  suit  of  black  resembling,  as  he  put  it,  that  of 
a  Wesleyan  minister.  Upon  his  going  up  the  staircase 
of  the  house  to  which  he  was  invited  the  first  person 
he  perceived  was  Mr.  Balfour,  in  evening  dress;  the 
second  was  Mr.  Wyndham,  in  evening  dress;  and 
immediately  he  was  introduced  into  a  dazzling  hall 
that  was  one  sea  of  white  shirt  -  fronts  relieved  by 
black  swallow-tails.  He  was  the  only  undressed  per- 
son in  the  room.  Then  his  kind  host  presented  him- 
self, his  face  beaming  with  philanthropy  and  with 
the  thought  of  kindly  encouragement  that  he  had  given 
to  struggling  genius!  I  think  Mr.  Shaw  does  not 
"dress"  at  all  nowadays,  and  in  the  dress  affected, 
at  all  events  by  his  disciples,  the  gray  homespuns, 
the  soft  hats,  the  comfortable  bagginess  about  the 
knees,  and  the  air  that  the  pockets  have  of  always 
being  full  of  apples,  the  last  faint  trickle  of  Pre- 
Raphaelite  influence  is  to  be  perceived.  Madox 
Brown  always  wore  a  black  morning  coat  edged  with 

142 


ANARCHISTS    AND    GRAY    FRIEZE 

black  braid  during  the  day,  but  Rossetti,  at  any  rate 
when  he  was  at  work,  was  much  addicted  to  gray 
frieze.  He  wore  habitually  a  curious  coat  of  pepper- 
and-salt  material,  in  shape  resembling  a  clergyman's 
ordinary  dress,  but  split  down  the  lateral  seams  so 
that  the  whole  front  of  the  coat  formed  on  each  side 
one  large  pocket.  When  he  went  out — which,  as  Mr. 
Meredith  has  informed  us,  was  much  too  seldom  for 
his  health — he  wore  a  gray  frieze  Inverness  cape  of 
a  thickness  so  extraordinary  that  it  was  as  stiff  as 
millboard.  This  grayness  and  roughness  very  much 
influenced  his  disciples  and  spread  to  the  disciples 
of  William  Morris,  with  the  results  that  we  see  at 
present.  I  know  this  to  be  the  fact  from  the  following 
circumstances  :  Upon  Rossetti's  death  his  Inverness, 
to  which  I  have  alluded  and  which  was  made  in  the 
year  1869,  descended  to  my  grandfather.  Upon  my 
grandfather's  death  it  descended  to  me,  it  being  then 
twenty- three  years  old.  I  wore  it  with  feelings  of 
immense  pride,  as  if  it  had  been — and  indeed,  was 
it  not  ? — the  mantle  of  a  prophet.  And  such  approba- 
tion did  it  meet  with  in  my  young  friends  of  that  date 
that  this  identical  garment  was  copied  seven  times, 
and  each  time  for  the  use  of  a  gentleman  whose  works 
when  Booksellers'  Row  still  existed  might  ordinarily 
be  found  in  the  twopenny  box.  So  this  garment 
spread  the  true  tradition,  and,  indeed,  it  was  im- 
perishable and  indestructible,  though  what  has  be- 
come of  it  by  now  I  do  not  know.  I  wore  it  for  several 

H3 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

years  until  it  must  have  been  aged  probably  thirty, 
when,  happening  to  wear  it  during  a  visit  to  my  tailor's 
and  telling  that  gentleman  its  romantic  history,  I  was 
distressed  to  hear  him  remark,  looking  over  his 
pince-nez: 

"Time  the  moths  had  it!" 

This  shed  such  a  slight  upon  the  garment  from  the 
point  of  view  of  tailors  that  I  never  wore  it  again.  It 
fell,  I  am  afraid,  into  the  hands  of  a  family  with  little 
respect  for  relics  of  the  great,  and  I  am  fairly  certain 
that  I  observed  its  capacious  folds  in  the  mists  of  an 
early  morning  upon  Romney  Marsh  some  months  ago, 
enveloping  the  limbs  of  an  elderly  and  poaching 
scoundrel  called  Slingsby. 

But,  indeed,  the  gray  frieze  apart,  there  was  little 
enough  in  externals  about  the  inner  ring  of  the  Pre- 
Raphaelites  that  was  decorative.  Rossetti  wore  gray 
frieze,  because  it  was  the  least  bothersome  of  materials; 
it  never  wanted  brushing,  it  never  wanted  renewing; 
there  it  was.  Madox  Brown  wore  always  an  emi- 
nently un-Bohemian  suit  of  black.  Christina  Rossetti 
affected  the  least  picturesque  of  black  garments  for 
daily  use,  while  on  occasions  of  a  festive  nature  she 
would  go  as  far  as  a  pearl-gray  watered  silk.  Millais, 
of  course,  was  purely  conventional  in  attire,  and  so 
was  Holman  Hunt.  I  remember  meeting  Holman 
Hunt  outside  High  Street,  Kensington  Station,  on  a 
rather  warmish  day.  He  was  wearing  an  overcoat  of 
extremely  fine,  light-colored  fur.  To  this  he  drew  my 

144 


ANARCHISTS    AND    GRAY    FRIEZE 

attention,  and  proceeded  to  lecture  me  upon  the 
virtues  of  economy,  saying  with  his  prophetic  air: 

"Young  man,  observe  this  garment.  I  bought  it  in 
the  year  1852,  giving  a  hundred  and  forty  pounds  for  it. 
It  is  now  1894.  This  overcoat  has  therefore  lasted 
me  forty-two  years  and  I  have  never  had  another. 
You  will  observe  that  it  has  actually  cost  me  per 
annum  something  less  than  £3  TOJ-.,  which  is  much  less, 
I  am  certain,  than  you  spend  upon  your  overcoats." 

And  here  Mr.  Hunt  regarded  Rossetti's  garment, 
which  was  then  aged  thirty-three,  and  cost  £6  los. 
when  it  was  new.  I  did  not,  however,  interrupt  him, 
and  the  great  man  continued: 

"And  you  will  observe  that  I  still  have  the  coat, 
which  is  worth  as  much,  or  more,  than  its  original 

77  O 

sum,  while,  for  all  these  years,  it  has  enabled  me  to 
present  a  flourishing  appearance  whenever  I  had  to 
transact  business." 

These  are,  of  course,  not  Mr.  Hunt's  exact  words, 
nor,  perhaps,  are  the  figures  exactly  right,  but  they 
render  the  effect  of  this  dissertation.  I  never  could 
understand  why  it  was  that,  whenever  I  came  near 
Mr.  Hunt,  he  should  always  lecture  me  on  the  virtue 
of  economy,  yet  this  was  the  case.  Nevertheless,  in 
those  days,  following  what  I  considered  to  be  the 
rules  of  Morrisian  socialism,  I  certainly  dressed  with 
an  extreme  economy,  and  I  doubt  whether  all  the 
clothes  I  had  on  could  have  cost  so  much  as  the  £3  IDJ. 
which  Mr.  Hunt  allotted  for  a  yearly  expenditure  on 

H5 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

overcoats.  There  was  Rossetti's  garment,  aged 
thirty-three;  there  was  a  water-tight  German  forest- 
er's pilot  jacket  which  I  had  bought  in  the  Bavarian 
Spessart  for  four  and  sixpence;  there  were  some 
trousers  which  I  imagine  cost  eighteen  shillings;  a 
leather  belt;  an  old  blue  shirt,  which,  being  made  of 
excellent  linen,  had  already  served  my  grandfather 
for  fifteen  years,  and  a  red  satin  tie  which  probably 
cost  one  shilling.  But  these  facts,  I  imagine,  were 
hidden  from  Mr.  Hunt,  who  had  no  particular  sym- 
pathy with  the  aesthetic  movement  or  with  advanced 
ideas.  Mr.  Holman  Hunt,  of  course,  was  a  Pre- 
Raphaelite  of  pure  blood,  and  anything  more  hideous, 
anything  more  purely  early  Victorian,  than  in  their  day 
the  Pre-Raphaelites  put  up  with  in  the  matter  of 
furniture  and  appointments  I  do  not  think  it  possible 
to  imagine. 

Holman  Hunt  and  Millais  separated  themselves 
early  from  the  other  Pre-Raphaelites,  and  their  fur- 
niture remained  normal,  following  the  fashions  of 
the  day.  And  this  remained  true  for  all  the  disciples 
of  the  first  Pre-Raphaelite  group.  Thus,  if  you  will 
look  at  Robert  B.  Martineau's  "The  Last  Day  in  the 
Old  Home,"  you  will  perceive  a  collection  of  the 
horrors  of  furnishing  as  it  was  understood  in  the  days 
when  Victoria  was  Queen — a  collection  rendered  by 
the  painter  with  a  care  so  loving  as  to  show  that  he 
at  least  had  no  idea  of  salvation  having  to  be  obtained 
by  curtain  serge  and  simplicity. 

146 


ANARCHISTS    AND    GRAY    FRIEZE 

The  first  impulses  toward  the  new  furnishing  came 
when  Rossetti  acquired,  during  a  visit  to  Oxford,  two 
disciples  called  William  Morris  and  Algernon  Charles 
Swinburne.  These  two  young  men  made  Rossetti's 
acquaintance  while  he  was  painting  the  frescoes  in  the 
Union — frescoes  which  have  now  almost  disappeared. 
Swinburne,  and  more  particularly  Morris,  must  have 
exercised  the  most  profound  of  influences  over  Dante 
Gabriel,  and  later  over  Madox  Brown.  For  I  have 
no  doubt  whatever  that  it  was  these  two  who  pushed 
this  great  figure  into  the  exaggerated  and  loose  med- 
iaevalism  that  distinguished  his  latest  period.  I  do 
not  mean  to  say  that  Rossetti  had  fallen  under  no 
mediaeval  influences  before  this  date,  since  obviously 
he  had  been  enormously  impressed  by  Sir  Walter 
Scott.  I  used  to  possess  a  yellow-bound  pamphlet 
entitled  Sir  Hugh  the  Heron,  and  printed  by  Rossetti's 
grandfather  when  Rossetti  himself  was  seven  or  eight. 
Sir  Hugh  the  Heron  contained  the  following  spirited 
verse,  which  always  lingers  in  my  memory: 

"And  the  shrieks  of  the  flying,  the  groans  of  the  dying, 

And  the  battle's   deafening  yell, 
And  the  armor  which   clanked   as  the  warrior  rose 
And  rattled  as  he  fell." 

This  first-printed  poem  of  Rossetti's  has  always 
seemed  to  me  symbolical  of  what,  by  himself,  he  did 
for  mediaevalism.  Scott  made  it  merely  romantic; 
he  suggested — I  don't  mean  to  say  that  he  ever  gave 

147 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

it  as  such — but  he  suggested  that  William  Wallace 
went  into  battle  in  black  velvet  short  hose,  with  in  one 
hand  a  court  sword  and  in  the  other  a  cambric  pocket- 
handkerchief.  Rossetti,  before  he  came  under  the 
influence  of  Morris  and  Burne  -Jones,  went  much 
deeper  into  mediaevalism  than  ever  Scott  did.  He 
looked  as  it  were  into  the  illuminated  capitals  of  missals 
and  so  gave  the  world  little  square  wooden  chambers 
all  gilded  with  women  in  hennins,  queer  musical 
instruments,  and  many  little,  pretty  quaint  conceits. 
Madox  Brown,  of  course,  in  his  peculiar  manner 
carried  the  quaintnesses  still  further.  With  his  queer 
knotted  English  mind  he  must  give  you  an  Iseult 
screaming  like  any  kitchen  wench,  a  Sir  Tristram 
expiring  in  an  extraordinarily  stiff  spasm  because 
armor  would  not  bend,  a  King  Mark  poking  a  par- 
ticularly ugly  face  into  a  grated  window,  and,  of  all 
things  in  the  world,  a  white  Maltese  terrier  yapping 
at  the  murderers.  This  picture  was,  of  course,  de- 
signed to  epater  les  bourgeois — touch  them  on  the  raw. 
And  as  such  it  need  not  be  considered  very  seriously. 
But,  between  them,  Madox  Brown  and  Rossetti 
invented  a  queer  and  quaint  sort  of  mediaevalism 
that  was  realistic  always  as  long  as  it  could  be 
picturesque.  Morris,  Swinburne,  and  Burne- Jones, 
however,  invented  the  gorgeous  glamour  of  mediaeval- 
ism.  It  was  as  if  they  said  they  must  have  pome- 
granates, pomegranates,  pomegranates  all  the  way. 
They  wanted  pomegranates  not  only  in  their  pictures, 

148 


ANARCHISTS    AND    GRAY    FRIEZE 

but  in  their  dining-rooms  and  on  their  beds.  I  should 
say  that  Rossetti  was  a  man  without  any  principles 
at  all,  who  earnestly  desired  to  find  some  means  of 
salvation  along  the  lines  of  least  resistance.  Madox 
Brown,  on  the  other  hand,  was  ready  to  make  a  prin- 
ciple out  of  anything  that  was  at  all  picturesque. 
Thus,  while  Rossetti  accepted  the  pomegranate  as  the 
be-all  and  end-all  of  life,  Madox  Brown  contented 
himself  with  playing  with  a  conventionalized  daisy 
pattern  such  as  could  grow  behind  any  St.  Michael 
or  Uriel  of  stained  glass.  Neither  Rossetti  nor  Madox 
Brown  had  the  least  desire  to  mediaevalize  their  homes. 
Rossetti  wanted  to  fill  his  house  with  anything  that 
wras  odd,  Chinese,  or  sparkling.  If  there  was  some- 
thing grewsome  about  it,  he  liked  it  all  the  better. 
Thus,  at  his  death,  two  marauders  out  of  the  shady 
crew  that  victimized  him,  and  one  honest  man,  each 
became  possessed  of  the  dark-lantern  used  by  Eugene 
Aram.  I  mean  to  say  that  quite  lately  there  were  in 
the  market  three  dark-lanterns,  each  of  which  was 
supposed  to  have  come  from  Rossetti's  house  at  his 
death,  only  one  of  which  had  been  bought  with  honest 
money  at  Rossetti's  sale.  Even  this  one  may  not 
have  been  the  relic  of  the  murderer  which  Rossetti 
had  purchased  with  immense  delight.  He  bought,  in 
fact,  just  anything  or  everything  that  amused  him 
or  tickled  his  fancy,  without  the  least  idea  of  making 
his  house  resemble  anything  but  an  old  curiosity  shop. 
This  collection  was  rendered  still  more  odd  by  the 

149 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

eccentricities  of  Mr.  Charles  Augustus  Howell,  an 
extraordinary  personage  who  ought  to  have  a  volume 
all  to  himself.  There  was  nothing  in  an  odd  jobbing 
way  that  Mr.  Howell  was  not  up  to.  He  supported 
his  family  for  some  time  by  using  a  diving  bell  to 
recover  treasure  from  a  lost  galleon  off  the  coast  of 
Portugal,  of  which  country  he  appears  to  have  been  a 
native.  He  became  Ruskin's  secretary,  and  he  had 
a  shop  in  which  he  combined  the  framing  and  the 
forging  of  masterpieces.  He  conducted  the  most 
remarkable  of  dealers'  swindles  with  the  most  con- 
summate ease  and  grace,  doing  it,  indeed,  so  lovably 
that  when  his  misdeeds  were  discovered  he  became 
only  more  beloved.  Such  a  character  would  obviously 
appeal  to  Rossetti,  and  as,  at  one  period  of  his  career, 
Rossetti's  income  ran  well  into  five  figures,  while  he 
threw  gold  out  of  all  the  windows  and  doors,  it  is 
obvious  that  such  a  character  as  Rossetti's  must  have 
appealed  very  strongly  to  Mr.  Charles  Augustus 
Howell.  The  stories  of  him  are  endless.  At  one  time, 
while  Rossetti  was  collecting  chinoisertes,  Howell 
happened  to  have  in  his  possession  a  nearly  priceless 
set  of  Chinese  tea  things.  These  he  promptly  pro- 
ceeded to  have  duplicated  at  his  establishment,  where 
forging  was  carried  on  more  wonderfully  than  seems 
possible.  This  forgery  he  proceeded  to  get  one  of  his 
concealed  agents  to  sell  to  Rossetti  for  an  enormously 
high  figure.  Coming  to  tea  with  the  poet-artist  on  the 
next  day,  he  remarked  to  Rossetti: 

150 


ANARCHISTS    AND    GRAY    FRIEZE 

"Hello,  Gabriel!  where  did  you  get  those  clumsy 
imitations  ?" 

Rossetti,  of  course,  was  filled  with  consternation, 
whereupon  Howell  remarked  comfortingly:  "Oh,  it's 
all  right,  old  chap,  I've  got  the  originals,  which  I'll 
let  you  have  for  an  old  song." 

And,  eventually,  he  sold  the  originals  to  Rossetti 
for  a  figure  very  considerably  over  that  at  which 
Rossetti  had  bought  the  forgeries.  Howell  was  then 
permitted  to  take  away  the  forgeries  as  of  no  value, 
and  Rossetti  was  left  with  the  originals.  Howell, 
however,  was  for  some  time  afterward  more  than 
usually  assiduous  in  visiting  the  painter-poet.  At 
each  visit  he  brought  one  of  the  forged  cups  in  his 
pocket,  and  while  Rossetti's  back  was  turned  he 
substituted  the  forgery  for  one  of  the  genuine  cups, 
which  he  took  away  in  his  pocket.  At  the  end  of  the 
series  of  visits,  therefore,  Rossetti  once  more  possessed 
the  copies  and  Howell  the  genuine  set,  which  he  sold, 
I  believe,  to  M.  Tissot. 

So  that  whatever  Rossetti  did  possess  he  never 
could  be  really  certain  of  what  it  actually  was.  He 
could  not  even,  as  I  have  elsewhere  pointed  out,  be 
certain  that  the  pictures  on  his  own  easels  were  by 
his  own  hand.  But  in  any  case  he  went  through  life 
with  a  singular  collection  of  oddments,  and  the  cata- 
logue of  his  effects  at  his  death  is  one  of  the  most 
romantic  documents  of  the  sort  that  it  is  easy  to  lay 
one's  hands  on. 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

Madox  Brown,  on  the  other  hand,  had  very  much 
of  Rossetti's  passion  for  picking  up  things.  But  he 
cared  very  little  for  the  wares  or  the  value  of  the 
objects  which  he  purchased.  He  would  buy  black 
Wedgewood,  or  he  would  buy  a  three-penny  pot  at  a 
little  shop  round  the  corner,  or  he  would  buy  gilt 
objects  from  the  palace  of  George  IV.  at  Brighton— 
in  short,  he  would  buy  anything  that  would  add  a 
spot  of  color  to  his  dining-room.  But  I  fancy  the  only 
bargain  he  ever  made  was  once  when  he  discovered 
a  cartoon  in  red  chalk  among  the  debris  of  a  rag-and- 
bone  shop.  For  this  he  exchanged  two  old  bonnets 
of  my  grandmother's.  Some  time  afterward  he  ob- 
served —  I  think  at  Agnew's  —  another  red-chalk 
cartoon  which  was  an  authenticated  Boucher.  This 
second  cartoon  was  so  obviously  the  other  half  of  the 
design  he  had  already  in  his  possession  that  he  had 
no  hesitation  in  purchasing  it  for  a  comparatively 
small  sum.  At  the  sale  of  his  effects,  in  1894,  this 
panel  fetched  quite  a  considerable  price,  and  in  the 
mean  time  it  had  looked  very  handsome  upon  the  walls 
of  his  drawing-room. 

O 

The  Madox  Brown  sale,  apart  from  its  note  of 
tragedy  for  myself  in  the  breaking  up  of  a  home  that 
had  seemed  so  romantic — that  still,  after  many  years, 
seems  to  me  so  romantic — had  about  it  something 
extremely  comic.  Madox  Brown's  rooms  had  always 
seemed  to  me  to  be  as  comfortable  and  as  pretty  as  one 
could  desire.  It  was  true  that  they  had  about  them 


ANARCHISTS    AND    GRAY    FRIEZE 

no  settled  design.  But  of  an  evening,  with  many 
candles  lit,  the  golden  wallpaper  shining  with  a  sub- 
dued glow,  the  red  curtains,  the  red  couch,  the  fire- 
place with  its  turkey-red  tiles,  the  large  table  covered 
with  books,  the  little  piano  of  a  golden  wood,  with 
its  panels  painted  and  gilded  by  William  Morris 
himself — all  these  things  had  about  them  a  prettiness, 
a  quaintness.  And,  with  the  coming  of  the  auction- 
eer's man,  it  all  fell  to  pieces  so  extraordinarily. 

I  do  not  think  I  shall  ever  forget  Madox  Brown's 
quaint  dismay  and  anger  when  Mr.  Harry  Quilter 
"discovered"  him.  During  his  long  absence  in 
Manchester  while  he  was  painting  the  twelve  frescoes 
in  the  Town  Hall — frescoes  which  were  of  great  size, 
each  of  which  occupied  him  a  year  and  were  paid  for 
very  insignificantly,  the  frescoes  which  the  Manches- 
ter Town  Council  afterward  desired  to  whitewash 
out — after  this  long  absence  from  London  Madox 
Brown  as  a  painter  and  as  a  man  had  become  entirely 
forgotten.  So  that,  when  he  returned  to  London,  he 
seemed  to  have  almost  no  friends  left,  and  no  one 
to  buy  his  pictures.  The  old  race  of  Northern  mer- 
chant princes  who  had  bought  so  liberally  were  all 
dead,  and  shortly  after  his  return  he  sold  to  Mr. 
Boddington,  of  Wilmslow,  fourteen  early  pictures  for 
four  hundred  pounds.  Most  of  these  were  lately 
exhibited  at  the  Dudley  Gallery,  where  one  of  them 
sold  for  more  than  half  the  price  that  had  been 
given  for  the  fourteen.  This  picture  is  now,  I  believe, 

153 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

in  the  possession  of  Mr.  Sargent.  Nevertheless,  in 
his  rather  dismal  circumstances,  Madox  Brown  set 
cheerfully  to  work  to  get  together  a  new  home  and  a 
new  circle  of  friends.  He  went  about  it  with  a  remark- 
able and  boyish  gayety,  and,  having  got  it  together, 
with  its  gilt-leather  wallpaper,  its  red  tiles,  its  furni- 
ture from  the  palace  of  George  IV.  at  Brighton,  and 
its  other  oddments,  he  really  considered  that  he  had 
produced  a  sort  of  palace.  Then  came  Mr.  Quilter. 
Mr.  Quilter  discovered  the  phrase  "Father  of  Pre- 
Raphaelism,"  which  so  disturbed  Mr.  Holman  Hunt. 
He  discovered  that  this  great  artist  whom  he  compared 
to  Titian,  Botticelli,  Holbein,  Hogarth,  and  to  Heaven 
knows  whom,  was  living  in  our  midst,  and  he  pro- 
claimed this  astounding  discovery  to  one  of  the  even- 
ing papers,  with  the  additional  circumstance  that 
Madox  Brown  was  living  in  a  state  of  the  most 
dismal  poverty.  He  described  Madox  Brown's  studio 
—the  only  room  in  the  house  to  which  he  had  been 
admitted  —  as  a  place  so  filled  with  old  fragments 
of  rusty  iron,  bits  of  string,  and  the  detritus  of  ages 
that  it  resembled  a  farrier's  shop.  He  described  a  lay 
figure  with  the  straw  sticking  out  of  all  its  members, 
easels  covered  with  dust  that  tottered  and  perpetually 
threatened  to  let  their  pictures  fall,  curtains  so  thread- 
bare that  they  were  mere  skeleton  protections  against 
the  sun  and  draughts.  In  short,  he  described  a  place 
half-way  between  the  Old  Curiosity  Shop  of  Dickens 
and  a  marine  store  in  a  suburb  of  Portsmouth.  Madox 

'54 


ANARCHISTS    AND    GRAY    FRIEZE 

Brown  read  this  picturesque  narrative  with  a  face  of 
exaggerated  bewilderment.  He  pulled  his  biretta  im- 
patiently off  his  snow-white  head,  and  gazed  over  his 
spectacles  at  the  bits  of  string,  the  fragments  of  old 
iron,  the  tottering  easels,  the  lay  figure,  with  straw 
sticking  out  of  every  joint,  that,  in  an  attitude  of  de- 
jection, hung  from  its  supports  like  a  man  that  has 
been  executed  three  centuries  before.  With  an  air  of 
extreme  satisfaction  he  regarded  all  these  objects 
which  Mr.  Quilter  had  so  picturesquely  and  accurate- 
ly described.  Then  he  put  on  his  biretta  once  more 
with  great  care,  and,  speaking  solemnly  and  deliber- 
ately, let  fall  the  words: 

"God  damn  and  blast  my  soul!  What  does  the 
fellow  want  ?" 

Madox  Brown  had  for  long  been  away  from  Lon- 
don, and  came  of  a  generation  of  artists  incomparably 
older  in  tradition  than  any  that  were  then  to  be 
found  alive  —  he,  the  erstwhile  disciple  of  David, 
the  pupil  of  Baron  Wappers,  who  had  had  his  first 
training  at  the  hands  of  the  Grand  School,  a  whole 
of  a  lifetime  before  —  Madox  Brown  had  simply 
never  heard  that  a  studio  was  a  place  where,  amid 
stuffed  peacocks,  to  the  tinkling  of  harmonious  foun- 
tains falling  into  marble  basins  half  hidden  by 
orange-trees,  beneath  an  alcove  of  beaten  copper  and 
with  walls  of  shining  porphyry,  you  sat  about  in  a 
velvet  coat  and  had  eau-de-cologne  squirted  over 
your  hair  by  a  small  black  page.  A  studio  for  him 
11  155 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

was  a  comfortable  place  that  no  housemaid  dare 
enter,  a  place  to  which  you  retired  to  work,  a  place  in 
which  you  treasured  up  every  object  you  had  ever 
painted,  from  a  rusty  iron  candlestick  to  half  a  dozen 
horse's  teeth — a  place  with  a  huge  table  on  which 
stood  all  the  objects  and  implements  that  you  had  ever 
used  waiting  amid  tranquil  rust  and  dust  until  it 
should  be  their  turn  again  to  come  in  handy.  So  that 
he  could  not  for  the  life  of  him  imagine  what  it  was 
Mr.  Quilter  did  want.  He  didn't,  in  fact,  know  what 
advertisement  was.  Mr.  Quilter,  on  the  other  hand, 
had  come  across  artists  who  mostly  knew  nothing  else. 
In  the  matter  of  the  studio  they  were  thus  at  cross 
purposes.  It  wasn't  a  sign  of  poverty;  it  was  just  a 
symptom  of  an  unbusiness-like  career. 

Madox  Brown,  in  fact,  was  the  most  unbusiness- 
like of  men,  and  he  had  less  sense  of  the  value  of 
money  than  any  person  I  have  ever  met.  He  had, 
indeed,  a  positive  genius  for  refusing  to  have  anything 
to  do  with  money  that  came  at  all  easily.  When  my 
mother  was  granted  a  pension  from  the  Civil  List 
upon  the  death  of  my  father,  Madox  Brown  greeted  the 
two  gentlemen  who  rather  timidly  brought  the  news 
with  such  a  torrent  of  violent  and  indignant  refusals 
that  one  of  them,  poor,  dear  Mr.  Hipkins,  the  most 
beloved  of  men,  to  whose  efforts  the  allowance  was 
mainly  due,  became  indisposed  and  remained  ill  for 
some  days  afterward.  Thus  my  mother  never  received 
a  penny  from  her  grateful  country.  A  number  of 

156 


ANARCHISTS    AND    GRAY    FRIEZE 

gentlemen,  all  of  them  artists,  I  believe,  subscribed 
a  considerable  sum,  amounting  to  several  thousand 
pounds,  in  order  to  commission  Madox  Brown  to  paint 
a  picture  for  presentation  to  the  National  Gallery. 
Such  an  honor,  they  very  carefully  pointed  out,  had 
been  paid  to  no  English  painter  with  the  exception 
of  Maclise,  though  it  was  frequent  enough  in  France. 
The  ambassadors  on  this  occasion  approached  Madox 
Brown  with  an  almost  unheard  -  of  caution.  For 
three  days  I  was  kept  on  the  watch  to  discover 
the  most  propitious  moment  when  my  grandfather's 
humor  after  the  passing  away  of  a  fit  of  the  gout 
was  at  its  very  sunniest.  I  telegraphed  to  Mr. 
Frederick  Shields,  who  came  at  his  fastest  in  a  hansom 
cab — a  vehicle  which  I  believe  he  detested.  And 
then  an  extraordinary  row  raged  in  the  house.  Madox 
Brown  insisted — as  he  had  insisted  in  the  case  of  my 
mother's  pension — that  it  was  all  a  plot  on  the  part 
of  the  damned  Academicians  to  humiliate  him.  He 
insisted  that  it  was  a  confounded  charity.  He  swore 
incessantly  and  perpetually,  upset  all  the  fire-irons, 
which  Mr.  Shields  patiently  and  silently  replaced. 
The  contest  raged  for  a  long  time;  it  continued 
through  many  days.  I  cannot  imagine  how  Mr.  Shields 
supported  it,  but,  the  most  self-sacrificing  of  men,  he 
triumphed  in  the  end  by  insisting  that  it  was  an  honor, 
an  unprecedented  honor.  The  four  or  five  Academi- 
cians who  had  humbly  begged  to  be  allowed  to  share 
in  the  privilege  of  subscribing  had  each  solemnly  and 

157 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

separately  mentioned  the  precedent  of  Maclise.  In  short, 
pale  and  exhausted,  Mr.  Shields  triumphed,  though 
my  grandfather  did  not  live  to  complete  the  picture. 

Of  the  many  devoted  friends  that  Madox  Brown 
had  I  think  that  Mr.  Shields  was  the  most  devoted 
and  the  best.  Honored  as  he  is  as  the  painter  of  the 
mural  decorations  in  the  Chapel  of  Ease,  near  the 
Marble  Arch — Sterne,  by-the-bye,  is  buried  in  the 
graveyard  behind  the  chapel,  his  tombstone  having 
been  provided  by  subscription  of  Freemasons,  though 
I  do  not  know  whether  this  is  the  first  honor  of 
its  kind  ever  paid  to  an  author  and  a  clergyman 
—I  should  still  like  to  relate  one  fact  which  does 
much  honor  to  this  painter's  heart,  an  honor  which 
I  believe  is  unshared  and  unequalled  in  the  annals  of 
painting.  When  Madox  Brown,  by  the  efforts  of 
Mr.  Shields  and  Mr.  Charles  Rowley,  was,  after 
many  storms,  commissioned  to  paint  six  of  the  panels 
in  the  great  hall  at  Manchester,  Mr.  Shields,  himself 
a  native  of  that  city,  was  nominated  to  paint  the  other 
six.  He  accepted  the  commission;  it  was  signed, 
sealed,  settled,  and  delivered.  Madox  Brown  began 
upon  his  work;  he  finished  one  panel;  he  finished 
two;  he  finished  three;  the  years  rolled  on.  But  Mr. 
Shields  made  no  sign.  And  Manchester  was  in  a 

o 

hurry.  They  began  to  press  Mr.  Shields;  Mr.  Shields 
said  nothing.  They  threatened  him  with  injunctions 
from  the  Court  of  Chancery;  they  writted  him,  they 
began  actions,  being  hot-headed  and  masculine  men, 

158 


ANARCHISTS    AND    GRAY    FRIEZE 

for  the  specific  performance  of  Mr.  Shields's  contract. 
All  the  while  Mr.  Shields  lay  absolutely  low.  At 
last,  in  despair  of  ever  getting  the  town  hall  finished, 
the  city  of  Manchester  commissioned  Madox  Brown 
to  complete  the  series  of  frescoes.  This,  again,  was 
Mr.  Shields's  triumph.  For,  from  the  first,  he  had 
accepted  the  commission  and  he  had  remained  silent 
through  years  of  bullying,  having  in  his  mind  all  the 
time  the  design  that  the  work  should  fall  to  my  grand- 
father, whom  he  considered  an  absolutely  great  artist. 
Had  he  at  first  refused  the  commission  it  would  have 
been  taken  by  some  painter  less  self-sacrificing.  He 
took  it,  therefore,  and  bore  the  consequences,  which 
were  very  troublesome. 

I  was  once  walking  with  this  fine  gentleman  when  he 
became  the  subject  of  a  street  boy's  remark  which 
should  not,  I  think,  be  lost  to  the  world.  That  Mr. 
Shields  is  of  this  opinion  I  feel  fairly  certain,  for  I 
have  many  times  heard  him  repeat  the  anecdote.  A 
deeply  religious  man,  Mr.  Shields  was,  at  the  time  of 
which  I  am  writing,  eminently  patriarchal  in  appear- 
ance. His  beard  was  of  great  length  and  his  iron-gray 
hair  depended  well  onto  his  shoulders.  This  attracted 
the  attention  of  an  extremely  small  boy  who  scarcely 
came  up  to  the  painter's  knee.  Both  his  eyes  and 
mouth  as  round  as  three  marbles,  the  child  trotted 
along,  gazing  up  into  the  artist's  eyes,  until  he  asked: 

"What  is  it,  my  little  man  ?" 

Then  at  last  the  boy  answered: 

»59 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

"Now  I  knows  why  it  was  the  barber  hung  hisself!" 

Mr.  Shields  was  not  in  any  way  embarrassed,  but 
when  I  was  extremely  young  and  extremely  self- 
conscious  he  once  extremely  embarrassed  me.  Being 
of  this  picturesque  appearance,  he  was  walking  with 
myself  and  Mr.  Harold  Rathbone,  the  almost  more 
picturesque  originator  of  Delia  Robbia  ware  pottery. 
This  was  a  praiseworthy  enterprise  for  the  manufac- 
ture among  other  things  of  beautiful  milk-jugs,  which, 
at  ten  and  sixpence  apiece,  Mr.  Rathbone  considered 
would  be  so  handy  for  the  Lancashire  mill  girls  when 
they  went  on  a  day's  outing  in  the  country.  We  were 
in  the  most  crowded  part  of  Piccadilly;  the  eyes  of  Eu- 
rope seemed  to  be  already  more  than  sufficiently  upon 
us  to  suit  my  taste.  Mr.  Rathbone  suddenly  an- 
nounced that  he  had  succeeded  in  persuading  the 
Liverpool  corporation  to  buy  Mr.  Holman  Hunt's 
picture  of  "The  Triumph  of  the  Innocents."  Mr. 
Shields  stopped  dramatically.  His  eyes  became  as 
large  and  round  as  those  of  the  street  child: 

"You  have,  Harold!"  he  exclaimed,  and  opening 
his  arms  wide  he  cried  out,  "Let  me  kiss  you,  Harold!" 

The  two  artists,  their  Inverness  capes  flying  out  and 
seeming  to  cover  the  whole  of  Piccadilly,  fell  into  each 
other's  arms.  As  for  me,  I  ran  away  at  the  top  of  my 
speed  and  hid  myself  in  the  gloomy  entrance  under  the 
steps  of  the  orchestra  at  the  back  of  St.  James's  Hall. 
But  I  wish  now  I  could  again  witness  an  incident 
arising  from  another  such  occasion. 

160 


VIII 

VARIOUS    CONSPIRATORS 

THE  earliest  Pre-Raphaelites  bothered  themselves 
very  little,  therefore,  with  politics,  Rossetti  him- 
self less  than  any  of  the  others,  though  most  of  the 
Rossettis  had  always  views  of  an  advanced  char- 
acter. How  could  it  be  otherwise  with  Italians  whose 
earliest  ideas  were  centred  around  the  struggle  for 
Italian  freedom  ?  It  has  always  seemed  to  me  a  curious 
conjunction  that  Napoleon  III.,  when  he  was  a  pauper 
exile  in  London,  was  a  frequent  visitor  at  the  little 
house  in  Charlotte  Street  where  the  Rossettis  lived  in 
an  odor  of  Italian  conspiracy.  And  it  has  sometimes 
occurred  to  me  to  wonder  whether  the  germs  of 
Napoleon's  later  policy — that  Utopian  and  tremendous 
idea  that  was  his  of  uniting  all  Latin  humanity  in  one 
immense  alliance  under  the  aegis  and  hegemony  of 
the  eagle  of  France;  that  tremendous  idea  that,  ap- 
pearing amid  the  smoke  of  Solferino  and  Sadowa, 
fell  so  tragically  upon  the  field  of  Sedan — whether 
that  idea  did  not  find  its  birth  in  the  little  room  where 
Rossetti,  the  father,  sat  and  talked  continuously  of 
Dante  and  of  Italia  una. 

161 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

I  remember  hearing  an  anecdote  concerning  Maz- 
zini  that  has  nothing  to  do  with  Pre-Raphaelites,  but 
it  is  one  that  amuses  me.  In  the  time  of  Mazzini's 
exile  in  London  he  was  in  circumstances  of  extreme 
poverty.  One  of  the  sympathizers  with  the  cause  of 
the  liberation  of  Italy  allowed  the  refugee  to  live  in 
the  attic  of  his  office.  He  was  a  Mr.  Shaen,  a  solicitor 
of  distinction,  and  his  offices  were  naturally  in  Bed- 
ford Row.  He  rented  the  whole  house,  but  used  only 
the  lower  rooms. 

Years  passed;  Mazzini  went  away,  died,  and  was 
enshrined  in  the  hearts  of  his  liberated  countrymen. 
More  years  passed;  Mr.  Shaen  died;  the  firm  which 
Mr.  Shaen  founded  grew  larger  and  larger.  The 
clerks  invaded  room  after  room  of  the  upper  house, 
until  at  last  they  worked  in  the  very  attics.  One  day 
one  of  the  partners  was  dictating  a  difficult  letter  to  a 
clerk  in  such  an  attic.  He  stood  before  the  fire  and 
absent-mindedly  fingered  a  dusty,  spherical  object  of 
iron  that  stood  upon  the  mantelpiece.  Getting  hold 
of  the  phrase  that  he  wanted,  he  threw,  still  absent- 
mindedly,  this  iron  object  into  the  fire.  He  finished 
dictating  the  letter  and  left  the  room.  Immediately 
afterward  there  was  a  terrific  explosion.  The  round 
object  was  nothing  more  nor  less  than  a  small  bomb. 

With  such  objects  Mazzini  had  passed  his  time 
while,  years  before,  he  had  dreamed  of  the  liberation 
of  Italy.  He  had  gone  away;  the  bomb,  forgotten 
upon  the  mantelpiece,  had  remained  undisturbed  until 

162 


VARIOUS    CONSPIRATORS 

at  last  it  found  its  predestined  billet  in  the  maiming 
of  several  poor  clerks.  I  do  not  know  that  there  is 
any  particular  moral  to  this  story.  It  certainly  does 
not  bear  upon  what  was  certainly  the  great  moral 
of  the  Pre-Raphaelites,  as  of  the  aesthetes.  It  is  true 
that  this  great  moral  is  nothing  more  nor  less  than  the 
mediaeval  proverb:  "Let  the  cobbler  stick  to  his  last." 

Indeed,  it  was  in  exactly  those  words  that  my 
grandfather  replied  to  O'Connell  when  that  ardent 
champion  of  the  cause  of  United  Ireland  requested 
Madox  Brown,  Rossetti,  and  Holman  Hunt  to 
stand  for  Irish  constituencies.  O'Connell's  idea 
was  that,  if  the  cause  of  Ireland  could  be  repre- 
sented in  the  House  of  Commons  by  Englishmen  of 
distinction  in  the  world  of  arts  and  intellect,  the  cause 
of  Ireland  would  become  much  more  acceptable  in 
English  eyes.  In  this  he  was  probably  wrong,  for 
England  has  a  rooted  distrust  for  any  practitioner 
of  the  arts.  Rossetti,  in  any  case,  replied  that  his 
health  would  not  allow  him  to  go  through  the  excite- 
ment of  a  parliamentary  election. 

This  was  probably  true,  for  at  the  time  Rossetti 
was  at  the  lowest  pitch  of  his  nervous  malady.  Madox 
Brown,  however,  answered  in  a  full-dress  letter,  which 
was  exceedingly  characteristic  of  him.  He  refused 
emphatically  to  stand,  while  pointing  out  that  his 
entire  heart  went  out  to  the  cause  of  Ireland,  that  he 
sympathized  with  all  uprisings,  moonlightings,  boy- 
cottings,  and  any  other  cheerful  form  of  outrage. 

163 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

This  was  Madox  Brown,  the  romantic!  Immediately 
afterward,  however,  he  got  to  business  with  those 
words:  "Let  the  cobbler  stick  to  his  last." 

He  continued  that  the  affairs  of  Ireland  were  ex- 
ceedingly complicated,  that  in  Ireland  itself  were 
many  factions,  each  declaring  that  the  other  would 
be  the  ruin  of  the  nation,  and  that  he  had  to  pay  too 
much  attention  to  his  brushes  and  paints  ever  to 
tackle  so  thorny  a  question.  He  sympathized  entirely 
with  freedom  in  all  its  forms,  he  was  ready  to  vote 
for  Home  Rule  and  to  subscribe  to  the  funds  of  all  the 
Irish  parties,  but  he  felt  that  his  was  not  the  brain  of  a 
practical  politician.  What  Mr.  Holman  Hunt  wrote 
I  do  not  precisely  remember,  though  I  have  seen  his 
letter.  It  put  —  as  it  naturally  would  —  Madox 
Brown's  views  in  language  much  more  forcible  and 
much  less  polite. 

And,  indeed,  until  William  Morris  dragged  across 
the  way  of  aestheticism  the  red  herring  of  socialism, 
the  Pre-Raphaelites,  the  aesthetes,  painters,  poets, 
painter-poets,  and  all  the  inhabitants  of  the  drawing- 
rooms  that  Du  Maurier  illustrated  in  Punch — all  this 
little  earnest  or  posing  world — considered  itself  as  a 
hierarchy,  as  an  aristocracy  entirely  aloof  from  the 
common  sort. 

It  lived  under  the  sanction  of  the  arts,  and  from 
them  it  had  alike  its  placidity  and  its  holiness.  When 
poor  Oscar  Wilde  wandered  down  Bond  Street  in  parti- 
colored velvet  hose,  holding  a  single  red  flower  in  his 

164 


VARIOUS    CONSPIRATORS 

hand,  he  was  doing  what  in  those  days  was  called 
"touching  the  Philistine  on  the  raw."  In  France 
this  was  called  epater  le  bourgeois.  Maxime  du  Camp, 
whom  I  have  always  considered  the  most  odious  and 
belittling  of  memoirists — who  has  told  us  that,  but 
for  his  illness,  Flaubert  would  have  been  a  man  of 
genius — this  Du  Camp  does,  in  his  carping  way,  give 
us  a  picture  of  a  sort  of  society  which,  in  many  ways, 
resembled  that  of  the  aesthetes  toward  the  end  of  the 
last  century.  In  Flaubert,  Gautier,  even  in  Merimee, 
and  in  a  half-score  of  French  writers  just  before  the 
fall  of  the  second  empire,  there  was  this  immense 
feeling  of  the  priesthood  of  the  arts.  I  do  not  mean 
to  say  that  it  was  limited  to  the  coterie  that  surrounded 
Flaubert.  Victor  Hugo  had  it;  and  even  Alexandre 
Dumas  qui  ecnvait  comme  un  cocker  de  fiacre.  Du 
Camp,  the  whole  of  whose  admiration  was  given  to 
the  author  of  Monte  Cristo,  ought  by  rights  to  have 
been  an  English  critic. 

Indeed,  it  was  only  yesterday  that  I  read  in  my  daily 
paper  an  article  by  the  literary  critic  who  to-day  is 
most  respected  by  the  British  middle  classes.  Said 
this  gentleman:  "Thank  Heaven  that  the  day  of 
Flaubert  and  the  realists  is  passed  for  England,  and 
that  the  market  is  given  over  to  writers  of  the  stamp 
of  Mr.  A. — to  writers  who,  troubling  their  heads 
nothing  at  all  about  the  subtleties  of  art,  set  them- 
selves the  task  of  writing  a  readable  story  without 
bothering  about  the  words  in  which  it  is  written." 

165 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

These  words  might  well  have  been  written  by 
ce  cher  Maximel  The  same  English  writer,  in  re- 
viewing the  Memoirs  of  Mme.  de  Boigne,  goes  out  of 
his  way  to  poke  fun  at  the  duchess  who  surrounded 
Chateaubriand  with  an  atmosphere  of  adoration. 

This  seemed  ridiculous  to  Mr. .  It  would  not  have 

seemed  ridiculous  to  Du  Camp. 

But  be  these  matters  how  they  may,  it  is  pretty 
certain  that,  outside  this  aesthetic  circle,  we  have 
never  had  in  England  any  body  of  people,  whether 
artists  or  laity,  who  realized  that  art  was  a  thing  that 
it  was  in  the  least  worth  putting  one's  self  out  for,  and 
when  Oscar  Wilde  wandered  down  Bond  Street  in  a 
mediaeval  costume,  bearing  in  his  hand  a  flower,  he 
was  doing  something  not  merely  ridiculous.  It  was 
militant. 

Wilde  himself  I  met  only  in  his  later  years.  I 
remember  being  at  a  garden  party  of  the  Bishop  of 
London,  and  hearing  behind  me  a  conversation  so 
indelicate  that  I  could  not  resist  turning  around. 
Oscar  Wilde,  very  fat,  with  the  remainder  of  young 
handsomeness — even  of  young  beauty — was  talking 
to  a  lady.  It  would  be  more  precise  to  say  that  the 
lady  was  talking  to  Wilde,  for  it  was  certainly  she  who 
supplied  the  indelicacies  in  their  conversation,  for, 
as  I  knew  Wilde,  he  had  a  singularly  cleanly  tongue. 

But  I  found  him  exceedingly  difficult  to  talk  to, 
and  I  only  once  remember  hearing  him  utter  one  of  his 
brilliancies.  This  was  at  a  private  view  of  the  New 

166 


VARIOUS    CONSPIRATORS 

Gallery.  Some  one  asked  Wilde  if  he  were  not  going 
to  the  soiree  of  the  O.  P.  Club.  Wilde,  who  at  that 
time  had  embroiled  himself  with  that  organization, 
replied:  "No.  Why,  I  should  be  like  a  poor  lion  in 
a  den  of  savage  Daniels." 

I  saw  him  once  or  twice  afterward  in  Paris,  where  he 
was,  I  think,  rather  shamefully  treated  by  the  younger 
denizens  of  Montmartre  and  of  the  Quartier  Latin. 
I  remember  him  as,  indeed,  a  tragic  figure,  seated  at 
a  table  in  a  little  cabaret,  lachrymosely  drunk,  and 
being  tormented  by  an  abominable  gang  of  young 
students  of  the  four  arts. 

Wilde  possessed  a  walking-stick  with  an  ivory  head, 
to  which  he  attached  much  affection — and,  indeed, 
in  his  then  miserable  poverty,  it  was  an  object  of  con- 
siderable intrinsic  value.  Prowling  about  the  same 
cabaret  was  one  of  those  miserable  wrecks  of  human- 
ity, a  harmless,  parasitic  imbecile,  called  Bibi  Latouche. 
The  young  students  were  engaged  in  persuading  poor 
Wilde  that  this  imbecile  was  a  dangerous  malefactor. 
Bibi  was  supposed  to  have  taken  a  fancy  to  Wilde's 
walking-stick,  and  the  young  men  were  engaged  in 
persuading  the  poet  that,  if  he  did  not  surrender 
this  treasure,  he  would  be  murdered  on  his  way  home 
through  the  lonely  streets.  Wilde  cried  and  pro- 
tested. 

I  do  not  know  that  I  acted  any  heroic  part  in  the 
matter.  I  was  so  disgusted  that  I  went  straight  out 
of  the  cafe,  permanently  cured  of  any  taste  for  Bohe- 

167 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

mianism  that  I  may  ever  have  possessed.  Indeed,  I 
have  never  since  been  able  to  see  a  student,  with  his 
blue  beret,  his  floating  cloak,  his  floating  tie,  and  his 
youthful  beard,  without  a  feeling  of  aversion. 

One  of  Wilde's  French  intimates  of  that  date 
assured  me,  and  repeated  with  the  utmost  earnest- 
ness and  many  asservations,  that  he  was  sure  Wilde 
only  sinned  par  pure  snobisme,  and  in  order  to  touch 
the  Philistine  on  the  raw.  Of  this  I  am  pretty  well 
satisfied,  just  as  I  am  certain  that  such  a  trial  as  that 
of  Wilde  was  a  lamentable  error  of  public  policy  on 
the  part  of  the  police.  He  should  have  been  given 
his  warning,  and  have  been  allowed  to  escape  across 
the  Channel.  That  any  earthly  good  could  come  of 
the  trial  no  one,  I  think,  would  be  so  rash  as  to  ad- 
vance. I  did  not  like  Wilde;  his  works  seemed  to  me 
derivative  and  of  no  importance,  his  humor  thin 
and  mechanical,  and  I  am  lost  in  amazement  at  the 
fact  that  in  Germany  and  to  some  extent  in  France 
Wilde  should  be  considered  a  writer  of  enormous 
worth.  Nevertheless,  I  cannot  help  thinking  that 
his  fate  was  infinitely  more  bitter  than  anything  he 
could  have  deserved.  As  a  scholar  he  was  worthy 
of  the  greatest  respect.  His  conversation,  though  it 
did  not  appeal  to  me,  gave,  as  I  can  well  believe, 
immense  pleasure  to  innumerable  persons;  so  did 
his  plays,  so  did  his  verse.  Into  his  extravagances  he 
was  pushed  by  the  quality  of  his  admirers,  who  de- 
manded always  more  and  more  follies;  when  they 

1 68 


VARIOUS    CONSPIRATORS 

had  pushed  him  to  his  fall,  they  very  shamefully 
deserted  this  notable  man. 

On  the  afternoon  when  the  sentence  against  Wilde 
had  been  pronounced  I  met  Dr.  Garnett  on  the  steps 
of  the  British  Museum.  He  said  gravely:  "This  is 
the  death-blow  to  English  poetry."  I  looked  at  him 
in  amazement,  and  he  continued:  'The  only  poets 
we  have  are  the  Pre-Raphaelites,  and  this  will  cast 
so  much  odium  upon  them  that  the  habit  of  reading 
poetry  will  die  out  in  England." 

I  was  so  astonished  that  I  laughed  out  loud.  I  had 
hardly  imagined  that  Wilde  could  be  called  a  Pre-Ra- 
phaelite at  all.  Indeed,  it  was  only  because  of  the  con- 
fusion that  existed  between  Pre-Raphaelism  and  JEs- 
theticism  that  the  name  ever  became  attached  to  this 
group  of  poets.  Pre-Raphaelism  as  it  existed  in  the 
forties  and  fifties  was  a  sort  of  realism  inspired  by 
high  moral  purpose. 

jEstheticism,  which  originated  with  Burne  -  Jones 
and  Morris,  was  a  movement  that  concerned  itself 
with  idealizing  anything  that  was  mediaeval.  It  may 
be  symbolized  by  the  words,  "long  necks  and  pome- 
granates." Wilde  carried  this  ideal  one  stage  further. 
He  desired  to  live  upon  the  smell  of  a  lily.  I  do  not 
know  that  he  ever  did,  but  I  know  that  he  was  in  the 
habit  of  sending  to  young  ladies  whom  he  admired 
a  single  lily  flower,  carefully  packed  in  cotton-wool. 
And  the  cry  from  the  austere  realism  of  my  grand- 
father's picture  of  "Work,"  or  Holman  Hunt's  "Sav- 

169 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

iour  in  the  Temple,"  was  so  far  that  I  may  well  be 
pardoned  for  not  recognizing  Wilde  at  all  under  the 
mantle  of  a  sot  disant  Pre-Raphaelite. 

But,  looking  back,  I  recognize  how  true  Dr.  Gar- 
nett's  words  were.  For  certainly  at  about  that  date 
English  poetry  died.  It  is  really  extraordinary  the 
difference  that  has  arisen  between  those  days  and  now 
— a  matter  of  not  twenty  years. 

The  literary  life  of  London  of  the  early  nineteenth 
century  was  extraordinarily  alive  and  extraordinarily 
vivid.  To  be  a  writer  then  was  to  be  something 
monumental.  I  remember  almost  losing  my  breath 
with  joy  and  astonishment  when  Mr.  Zangwill  once, 
in  a  railway  carriage,  handed  me  a  cigarette;  to  have 
spoken  to  Mr.  William  Watson  was  as  glorious  a  thing 
as  to  have  spoken  to  Napoleon  the  Great.  In  those 
days  writers  were  interviewed;  their  houses,  their 
writing-desks,  their  very  blotting  pads  were  photo- 
graphed for  the  weekly  papers.  Their  cats,  even, 
were  immortalized  by  the  weekly  press.  Think  of 
that  now! 

But  when  Swinburne  died — to  our  lasting  shame — 
we  did  not  even  bury  him  in  Westminster  Abbey. 
To  our  lasting  shame,  I  say,  for  Swinburne  was, 
without  exception,  the  best  known  Englishman  in  the 
world.  I  do  not  think  that  it  was  the  trial  of  Wilde 
that  alone  brought  this  about.  Two  other  factors 
conduced. 

In  the  glorious  nineties  Mr.  John  Lane  and  Mr. 

170 


VARIOUS    CONSPIRATORS 

Elkin  Mathews  founded  a  romantic  and  wonderful 
publishing  business.  This  was  called  the  Bodley  Head. 
It  attracted  all  the  young  poets  of  the  nest  of  singing 
birds  that  England  then  was.  There  never  was  such 
an  excitement. 

Little  volumes  of  poems  were  published  in  a  limited 
edition,  and  forty,  fifty,  or  sixty  pounds  would  be 
paid  at  auction  for  a  single  copy.  There  appeared 
to  be  no  end  to  it,  and  then  the  end  came.  I  do 
not  know  why  Mr.  Lane  and  Mr.  Mathews  parted; 
I  do  not  know  why  the  Bodley  Head  died  down. 
No  doubt  the  fate  of  Wilde  had  a  great  deal  to 
do  with  it.  Probably  the  public,  with  its  singular 
and  muddle-headed  perspicacity,  inseparably  con- 
nected in  its  mind  the  idea  of  poetry  with  ideas  of  vice. 
I  do  not  know.  At  any  rate,  all  these  glories  died 
away  as  utterly  as  the  radiance  is  said  to  vanish  from 
the  dying  flying-fish. 

And  then  came  the  Boer  War,  which  appears  to  me 
like  a  chasm  separating  the  new  world  from  the  old. 
Since  that  period  the  whole  tone  of  England  appears 
to  me  to  have  entirely  changed.  Principles  have  died 
out  of  politics,  even  as  the  spirit  of  artistry  has  died 
out  among  the  practitioners  of  the  arts. 

I  remember  talking  to  a  distinguished  Tory  thinker 
some  time  ago  as  to  the  dominant  personalities  of  the 
present  political  world.  I  mentioned  the  Chancellor 
of  the  Exchequer. 

"Ah,"  said  my  friend,  "that  is  a  man.  We  ought 
12  171 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

to  have  had  him  to  do  our  dirty  work.  We  can  never 
get  along  without  some  one  of  the  sort.  We  had 
Disraeli;  we  had  Chamberlain.  We  ought  to  have 
had  Lloyd  George."  Think  of  that! 

As  it  is  in  the  political  world,  so  in  the  artistic.  I 
do  not  mean  to  say  that  the  Pre-Raphaelites  were  any 
very  great  shakes.  But  they  cared  intensely  about 
their  work;  they  talked  about  it  and  about  little  else. 
They  regarded  themselves,  indeed,  as  priests.  And 
without  some  such  beliefs,  how  can  an  artist  be 
hardened  to  do  good  work  ?  There  is  no  being  so 
solitary,  there  is  no  being  with  so  little  power  of 
gauging  where  he  stands  in  the  estimation  of  the 
world. 

I — and  when  I  write  "  I  "  I  mean  every  writer  who 
ever  used  a  hyphen — am  told  sometimes  that  I  am 
the  finest — or,  let  us  say,  the  most  precious — stylist 
now  employing  the  English  language.  That  may  be 
so  or  it  may  not.  What  means  have  I  of  knowing  ? 
For  the  very  paper  which  says  that  such  and  such  a 
work  of  mine  is  the  finest  of  the  sort  that  was  ever 
written  will  say  to-morrow  that  a  book  by  Miss  - 
is  a  work  almost  inconceivably  fine — the  finest  thing 
since  Shakespeare;  and  this  is  constantly  happening 
to  me. 

A  weekly  paper  last  year  wrote  of  one  of  my  books: 
"This  is  undoubtedly  the  finest  historical  novel  that 
has  appeared  since  the  days  of  Scott."  Next  week, 
in  the  same  column,  written  by  the  same  hand,  there 

172 


VARIOUS    CONSPIRATORS 

appeared  the  review  of  a  novel  by  a  female  connection 
of  the  critic.  "This,"  he  said,  "is  undoubtedly  the 
finest  historical  novel  that  has  appeared  since  the 
days  of  Scott."  Where,  then,  do  I  stand,  or  to  whom 
shall  I  go  to  find  out  ?  Is  it  to  my  sales  ?  They  are 
satisfactory,  but  they  might  be  larger.  Is  it  to  my 
publisher  ?  He  will  inevitably  tell  me — and  every 
writer  who  ever  used  a  hyphen — that  he  loses  money 
over  my  books. 

It  is  twenty  years  since  I  published  my  first  novel, 
and  every  year  or  so  since  then  the  publisher  of  that 
early  work  has  written  to  tell  me  that  he  lost  one 
hundred  pounds  by  that  book,  and  why  will  I  not  give 
him  another  ?  And  I  ask  myself  why — if  this  gentle- 
man once  lost  so  largely  over  me — why  does  he  wish 
to  publish  me  again  ?  Or  why  should  any  one  wish 
to  publish  my  work  ?  Yet  I  have  never  written  a  line 
that  has  not  been  published. 

This,  of  course,  is  only  the  fortune  of  war;  but 
what  strikes  me  as  remarkable  was  that  my  grand- 
father was  as  anxious  to  embark  me  upon  an  artistic 
career  as  most  parents  are  to  prevent  their  children 
from  entering  into  a  life  that,  as  a  rule,  is  so  pre- 
carious. 

My  father's  last  words  to  me  were:  "Fordie, 
whatever  you  do,  never  write  a  book."  Indeed,  so 
little  idea  had  I  of  meddling  with  the  arts  that,  al- 
though to  me  a  writer  was  a  very  wonderful  person, 
I  prepared  myself  very  strenuously  for  the  Indian 

173 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

civil  service.  This  was  a  real  grief  to  my  grandfather, 
and  I  think  he  was  exceedingly  overjoyed  when  the 
doctors  refused  to  pass  me  for  that  service  on  the 
ground  that  I  had  an  enlarged  liver.  And  when, 
then,  I  seriously  proposed  to  go  into  an  office,  his 
wrath  became  tempestuous. 

Tearing  off  his  nightcap — for  he  happened  at  the 
time  to  be  in  bed  with  a  bad  attack  of  gout — he  flung 
it  to  the  other  end  of  the  room. 

"God  damn  and  blast  my  soul!"  he  exclaimed. 
"Isn't  it  enough  that  you  escaped  providentially  from 
being  one  kind  of  a  cursed  clerk,  but  you  want  to  go 
and  be  another  ?  I  tell  you,  I  will  turn  you  straight 
out  of  my  house  if  you  go  in  for  any  kind  of  com- 
mercial life."  So  that  my  fate  was  settled  for  me. 


IX 

POETS    AND    PRESSES 

I  THINK  that  there  is  no  crime — literary  or  con- 
nected with  literature — that  nowadays  an  average, 
fairly  honest  English  writer  will  not  commit  for  the 
sake  of  a  little  money.  He  will  lengthen  his  book 
to  suit  one  publisher;  he  will  cut  it  down  to  suit 
another.  Nay,  men  otherwise  honorable  and  trust- 
worthy will,  for  the  matter  of  that,  perjure  them- 
selves in  the  most  incredible  manner  as  to  financial 
arrangements  they  may  have  come  to,  or  in  the 
most  cold-blooded  style  will  break  contracts  and 
ignore  obligations.  I  suppose  that  never  before  was 
the  financial  struggle  among  the  literary  classes  so 
embittered  and  so  ignoble.  The  actual  circum- 
stances of  literary  life  may  have  been  more  humiliating 
in  the  days  when  Johnson  waited  upon  the  patron 
that  he  never  found.  Hazlitt  and  the  English  essayists 
who  seem  to  have  existed  in  an  atmosphere  of  tallow 
candles  and  porter,  and  to  have  passed  their  days  in 
low  pot-houses,  may  have  been  actually  worse  off 
than  writers  of  their  rank  would  be  to-day.  Hood 
starved,  Douglas  Jerrold,  Hannay,  or  Angus  B.  Riach 

175 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

led  existences  of  extreme  squalor  with  spirits  of  the 
most  high.  And,  indeed,  disagreeable  as  Bohemian- 
ism  seems  to  me,  the  somewhat  squalid  lives  of  writers 
and  artists  of  the  forties  and  fifties  had  about  them 
something  much  more  manly,  and  even  a  little  more 
romantic,  than  is  to  be  found  in  the  literary  life  of 
to-day.  I  do  not  know  that  the  artist  of  the  forties 
troubled  himself  much  about  social  position.  Cruik- 
shank  was  violently  angry  when  Maclise,  in  his  won- 
derful series  of  pen-and-ink  portraits  in  Erasers 
Magazine,  gave  to  the  world  a  likeness  of  the  im- 
mortalizer  of  Pickwick  sitting  upon  a  barrel  in  a 
boozing-ken,  his  sketch-block  held  before  him,  while 
his  keen  and  restless  eyes  surveyed  what  the  commen- 
tator in  the  text  calls  "This  scene  of  tumult  and 
crime."  Mr.  Cruikshank  wrote  indignantly  to  declare 
that  it  was  shameful  to  pillorize  him  forever  as  sitting 
in  such  low  haunts.  He  wished  to  say  that  he  was  as 
good  a  gentleman  as  the  Duke  of  Wellington,  and 
passed  his  days  as  a  gentleman  should.  And,  indeed, 
I  dimly  remember  being  taken  to  call  at  Cruikshank's 
home  in  Mornington  Crescent — though  Cruikshank 
himself  must  have  been  long  dead — and  seeing  there 
such  Nottingham  lace  curtains,  pieces  of  brain-coral, 
daguerreotypes,  silhouettes,  and  engravings  after 
Cruikshank  as  would  have  been  found  in  any  middle- 
class  home  of  early  and  mid-Victorian  days.  One  of 
the  principal  of  these  engravings  was  the  immense 
caricature  that  Cruikshank  made  for  the  Good 

176 


POETS    AND    PRESSES 


Templars.  This  represented,  upon  one  hand,  the 
prosperous  and  whiskered  satisfaction  that  falls 
to  a  man  who  has  led  a  teetotal  existence,  and,  in 
many  terrible  forms,  what  would  happen  to  you  if 
you  indulged  in  any  kind  of  alcoholic  beverage. 

Dickens  avowed  quite  frankly  and  creditably  his 
desire  to  have  footmen  in  purple  velvet  small-clothes 
to  hang  behind  his  carriage,  and  Thackeray  was  never 
quite  easy  as  to  his  social  position.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  there  was,  as  a  general  rule,  very  little  thought 
about  these  matters.  You  earned  very  little,  so  you 
sat  in  a  pot-house  because  you  could  not  afford  a  club. 
And  you  got  through  life  somehow  without  much  troub- 
ling to  make  yourself  of  importance  by  meddling  in 
politics.  Thus,  for  instance,  there  was  my  grand- 
father's cousin,  Tristram  Madox,  who,  being  along 
with  JamesJHannay,  a  midshipman,  was,  along  with 
him,  cashiered  and  turned  out  of  the  Service  for 
breaking  leave  and  going  ashore  at  Malta  and  "vio- 
lently assaulting  Mr.  Peter  Parker,  Tobacconist." 
Tristram  Madox  ran  through  several  subsequent 
fortunes,  and  ended  by  living  on  ten  shillings  a  week 
that  were  regularly  sent  him  by  Madox  Brown.  This 
allowance  was  continued  for  many  years — twenty  or 
thirty,  I  should  think.  One  day  it  occurred  to  Madox 
Brown  that  he  would  like  some  news  of  his  poor 
relation.  I  was  accordingly  sent  down  to  the  squalid 
cottage  in  a  suburb  of  Ramsgate,to  which  for  so  many 
years  the  weekly  postal  orders  had  been  addressed. 

177 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

Upon  my  mentioning  the  name  of  Madox,  consterna- 
tion fell  upon  a  pale-faced  household.  Tristram 
Madox  had  been  dead  ten  years;  in  the  interval 
the  cottage  had  changed  hands  twice,  but  the  incoming 
tenants  had  always  accepted  gratefully  the  weekly 
ten  shillings  that  fell  upon  them  from  they  knew  not 
where. 

Hannay,  on  the  other  hand — presumably  because 
he  had  no  fortunes  to  run  through — adopted  the  life 
of  a  man  of  letters.  He  wrote  one  sufficiently  bad 
novel,  called  Eustace  Conyers,  and  lived  that  life 
which  always  seemed  to  lie  beneath  the  shadow  of  the 
King's  Bench  Prison.  I  never  heard  my  grandfather 
say  much  that  was  particularly  illuminating  about 
this  group  of  men;  though  his  cousin  took  him  very 
frequently  into  their  society.  Their  humor  seems  to 
have  been  brutal  and  personal,  but  only  a  bludgeon 
would  suppress  it.  Thus,  when  Tristram  Madox 
was  talking  about  one  of  his  distinguished  ancestors 
of  the  tenth  century,  Douglas  Jerrold  shut  him  up 
by  saying,  "I  know!  The  man  who  was  hanged  for 
sheep-stealing."  Or,  again,  when  Douglas  Jerrold 
was  uttering  a  flood  of  brilliant  witticisms,  a  very 
drunken  woman  who  had  been  asleep  with  her  head 
upon  the  table  opposite  Jerrold  shut  him  up  by 
raising  a  bleared  face  and  exclaiming: 

"You  are  a  bloody  fool." 

Nothing  else  would  have  shut  Jerrold  up.  But  I 
never  heard  my  grandfather  say  that  it  was  repre- 

178 


DOUGLAS      JERROLD 


POETS    AND    PRESSES 


hensible  or  remarkable  that  they  should  sit  in  low 
pot-houses,  or  even  that  he  should  go  there  to  meet 
them.  They  could  not  afford  anything  better;  so 
they  took  what  they  could  get.  As  for  the  social  revolu- 
tion, they  never  talked  about  it,  and,  although  Dickens 
wrote  Oliver  Twist  and  Bleak  House,  it  was  done 
with  a  warm-hearted  enthusiasm,  and  the  last  thing 
that  he  would  have  considered  himself  was  a  theoretic 
social  reformer.  Between  this  insouciance  and  the 
uneasy  social  self-consciousness  of  the  present-day 
literary  man  there  arose  for  a  short  time  the  priestly 
pride,  as  you  might  call  it,  of  the  Pre-Raphaelites. 

These  people  undoubtedly  regarded  themselves  as 
a  close  aristocracy.  *  They  produced  works  of  art 
of  one  kind  or  another,  and  no  one  who  did  not  pro- 
duce works  of  art  counted.  The  laity,  in  fact,  might 
not  have  existed  at  all.  Indeed,  even  the  learned  and 
professional  classes  were  not  excluded  from  the  gen- 
eral contempt.  An  Oxford  don  was  regarded  as  a 
foolish,  useless,  and  academic  person,  and  my  grand- 
father would  say,  for  instance,  of  a  doctor:  "Oh, 
those  fellows  have  nothing  better  to  do  than  to  wash 
their  hands  twelve  times  a  day."  It  never,  I  think, 
entered  his  head  to  inquire  why  a  doctor  so  frequently 
washed  his  hands.  He  regarded  it  as  a  kind  of  fop- 
pishness. And  I  can  well  remember  that  I  entirely 
shared  his  point  of  view.  So  that  to  speak  to  any  one 
who  made  money  by  commercial  pursuits  was  almost 
not  to  speak  to  a  man  at  all.  It  was  as  if  one  were 

179 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

communicating  with  one  of  the  lower  animals  endowed 
with  power  of  speech. 

And  to  a  certain  extent  the  public  of  those  days 
acquiesced.  From  the  earliest  mediaeval  times  until 
toward  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century  there  has 
always  been  vaguely  in  the  public  mind  the  idea  that 
the  man  of  letters  was  a  sort  of  necromancer — as  it 
were  a  black  priest.  In  the  dark  ages  almost  the  only 
poet  that  was  known  to  man  was  the  author  of  the 
SEneid.  I  do  not  suppose  that  many  men  had  read 
this  epic.  But  all  men  had  heard  of  its  author.  Was 
not  his  fame  world-wide  ?  Was  he  not  Duke  Virgil 
of  Mantua  ?  Did  he  not  build  the  city  of  Venice 
upon  an  egg  ?  Yes,  surely  he  indeed  was  the  greatest 
of  all  magicians.  He  left  behind  him  his  books  of 
magic.  If  you  took  a  pin  and  stuck  it  into  one  of  these 
books,  the  line  that  it  hit  upon  predicted  infallibly 
what  would  be  the  outcome  of  any  enterprise  upon 
which  you  were  engaged.  These  were  the  Sortes 
Firgiliance.  Similarly,  any  one  who  could  write  or 
was  engaged  with  books  was  regarded  as  a  necro- 
mancer. Did  he  not  have  strange  knowledges  ?  Thus 
you  had  Friar  Bacon,  Friar  Bungay,  or  Dr.  Faustus. 
The  writer  remained  thus  for  centuries  something 
mysterious,  some  one  possessing  those  strange  knowl- 
edges. For  various  classes,  by  the  time  of  Johnson 
his  mystery  has  gradually  been  whittled  down.  The 
aristocracy,  in  the  shape  of  patrons,  came  to  regard 
him  as  a  miserable  creature,  something  between  a 

180 


POETS    AND    PRESSES 


parasite  and  a  pimp.  To  his  personal  tradesman  he 
was  also  a  miserable  creature  who  did  not  pay  his 
bills  and  starved  in  a  garret.  By  the  nineteenth 
century  the  idea  that  he  was  a  sort  of  rogue  and 
vagabond  had  spread  pretty  well  throughout  the 
land.  A  middle-class  father  was  horrified  when  his 
daughter  proposed  to  marry  an  artist  or  a  writer. 
These  people  were  notorious  for  marital  infidelities 
and  for  the  precariousness  of  their  sources  of  live- 
lihood. Nevertheless  a  sort  of  mysterious  sanctity 
attached  to  their  produce.  There  can  hardly  have 
been  a  single  middle-class  household  that  did  not 
have  upon  its  drawing-room  table  one  or  two  copies 
of  books  by  Mr.  Ruskin.  I  remember  very  well 
being  consulted  by  a  prosperous  city  merchant  as 
to  what  books  he  should  take  with  him  upon  a 
sea  voyage.  I  gave  him  my  views,  to  which  he  paid 
no  attention.  He  took  with  him  Sesame  and  Lilies, 
Notes  Upon  Sheep/olds,  Carlyle's  Life  of  Frederick 
the  Great,  Tennyson's  Idylls  of  the  King,  and  Swin- 
burne's Atalanta.  With  this  singular  library  my 
portly  friend  set  sail.  He  had  not  the  slightest  idea 
of  what  any  of  these  books  might  be  about,  but  he 
said,  "Ah!  they'll  do  me  a  great  deal  of  good."  As  if, 
in  his  cabin,  these  volumes  would  act  as  a  spiritual 
lifebuoy  and  float  him,  supposing  the  ship  should 
founder,  if  not  to  land,  at  least  to  heaven.  That  was 
the  trace  of  the  old  necromantic  idea  that  something 
mysterious  attached  to  the  mere  possession  of  books. 

181 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

But  the  same  gentleman  would  introduce  a  writer  to 
his  friends  with  a  sort  of  apologetic  cough,  rather  as 
if  he  had  been  found  in  the  company  of  a  prostitute; 
and  when  revelations  of  Carlyle's  domestic  misfor- 
tunes were  published  he  manifested  a  calm  satisfac- 
tion. He  had  always  suspected  that  there  must  be 
something  wrong  because  Carlyle  was  an  author. 
But  he  still  expected  that  his  soul  was  saved  because 
he  possessed  the  Life  of  Frederick  the  Great. 

Thus  in  the  seventies  and  eighties  things  were  at  a 
very  satisfactory  pass.  Artists  regarded  themselves 
as  an  aristocracy  set  apart  and  walled  off.  The  rest 
of  the  world  regarded  them  as  dangerous  beings 
producing  mysterious  but,  upon  the  whole,  salutary 
works.  There  was  no  mixing  and  there  was  no  desire 
to  mix.  As  far  as  the  arts  were  concerned  there  was 
in  those  days  a  state  of  affairs  very  much  such  as  has 
subsisted  in  France  since  the  time  of  the  French 
Revolution.  It  is  true  that  in  France  somewhat  more 
social  importance  attaches  to  the  man  of  letters. 
That  is  largely  because  of  the  existence  of  the  French 
Academy.  At  the  time  when  there  is  a  vacancy  in 
the  ranks  of  the  Immortal  Forty  you  may  observe  a 
real  stir  in  what  is  known  as  All  Paris.  Duchesses 
get  out  their  carriages  and  drive  candidates  round 
to  pay  their  calls  upon  the  electors;  nay,  duchesses 
themselves  canvass  energetically  in  favor  of  the  par- 
ticular master  whose  claims  they  favor,  and  the 
inaugural  speech  of  an  elected  Academician  is  a  social 

182 


POETS    AND    PRESSES 


function  more  eagerly  desired  than  were  the  drawing- 
rooms  of  her  late  Majesty  Victoria.  But  otherwise, 
the  worlds  of  letters  and  of  arts  mix  comparatively 
little  with  commercial  society  in  France. 

And  this  has  always  seemed  to  me  to  be  a  com- 
paratively desirable  frame  of  mind  for  the  practitioner 
of  the  arts  to  adopt.  For,  unless  he  do  consider  himself 
—rightly  or  wrongly — as  something  apart,  he  must 
rapidly  lose  all  sense  of  the  dignity  of  his  avocation. 
He  will  find  himself  universally  regarded  no  longer, 
perhaps,  as  anything  so  important  as  a  dangerous 
rogue  and  vagabond,  but  as  something  socially 
negligible.  And  all  respect  for  literature  as  literature 
he  will  find  to  have  died  out  utterly  and  forever. 

Flaubert  was  obsessed  by  the  idea  that  literature 
was  a  thing  hated  by  the  bourgeoisie;  that  was  the 
dominant  idea  of  his  life.  And  in  his  day  I  think  he 
was  right.  That  is  to  say  that  the  common  man 
hated  violently  any  new  literary  form  that  was  vital, 
unusual,  and  original.  Thus  Flaubert  came  to  sit 
upon  the  criminal's  bench  after  the  publication  of 
Madame  Bovary.  But  nowadays,  and  in  England, 
we  have  a  singular  and  chilling  indifference  to  all 
literature.  Shakespeare,  Homer,  and  Dante  might 
all  put  out  their  works  to-day — for  all  I  know,  writers 
as  great  may  actually  be  among  us — and  the  actual 
effects  of  their  publishing  would  be  practically  nothing. 
It  is  all  very  well  to  say  that  the  press  is  responsible 
for  this  state  of  affairs.  We  have  a  press  in  England 

183 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

that  is,  upon  the  whole,  of  the  lowest  calibre  of  any 
in  the  civilized  world — I  am,  of  course,  speaking  in 
terms  intellectual,  for  our  news  organization  is  as 
good  as  it  could  be.  But  from  the  point  of  view 
of  criticism  of  any  kind,  whether  of  the  fine  arts, 
of  letters,  of  music,  or  of  life  itself,  all  but  the  very 
best  of  our  newspapers  of  to-day  would  disgrace  a 
fourth-class  provincial  town  of  France  or  Germany. 
And  this  is  a  purely  commercial  matter.  When  I 
was  conducting  a  certain  publication  I  was  rung  up 
upon  the  telephone  by  the  advertising  managers  of 
two  of  the  largest  and  most  respectable  daily  news- 
papers. The  first  one  told  me  that  if  I  would  take 
a  six-inch  double  column  in  his  literary  supplement 
once  a  week  he  would  undertake  that  a  favorable 
notice  of  my  publication  should  appear  in  his  organ 
side  by  side  with  the  advertisement.  The  advertising 
manager  asked  me  peremptorily  why  I  had  not  adver- 
tised in  his  columns.  I  replied  that  it  was  because  I 
disapproved  very  strongly  of  a  certain  action  to  which 
his  newspaper  had  committed  itself. 

"Very  well,  then,"  he  said;  "you  quite  understand 
that  no  notice  of  your  periodical  will  be  taken  in  our 
literary  columns." 

I  am  bound  to  say  that  this  gentleman  was  merely 
"bluffing,"  and  that  quite  impartial  notices  of  my 
publication  did  appear  in  his  paper.  Indeed,  I  should 
imagine  that  the  literary  editor  of  the  journal  in  ques- 
tion never  spoke  to  an  advertising  manager.  But  just 

184 


POETS    AND    PRESSES 


think  of  the  state  of  affairs — though  it  was  only  a 
matter  of  bluff — when  such  a  threat  could  be  made! 
I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  there  is  any  very  actual  or 
overt  corruption  in  the  London  press  of  to-day;  but 
the  hunt  for  advertisements  is  a  bitter  and  unscru- 
pulous struggle.  Advertisement  canvassers  are — or,  at 
any  rate,  I  have  found  them  so — men  entirely  without 
scruples,  and  the  editorial  departments  of  newspapers 
are  thoroughly  slack  in  the  supervision  of  their  repre- 
sentatives. The  advertisement  canvasser  will  come 
into  the  editorial  office  and  will  say  to  the  literary 
editor  in  a  friendly  but  slightly  complaining  manner 
(I  have  heard  this  speech  myself): 

"Look  here,  Messrs.  So-and-So  say  that  they  have 
spent  forty  pounds  a  week  with  us  for  the  last  three 
months  and  that  you  never  give  their  books  any  space 
at  all.  Couldn't  you  see  that  they  have  a  mention 
now  and  then  ?" 

The  literary  editor,  knowing  perfectly  well — or 
feeling  subconsciously — that  his  position  as  editor,  or 
perhaps  even  the  very  existence  of  his  literary  supple- 
ment, depends  upon  its  power  to  attract  advertise- 
ments, will  almost  certainly  look  out  for  something 
among  the  works  published  by  Messrs.  So-and-So 
and  will  then  praise  this  work  to  the  extent  of  a  column 
or  so.  He  will  not  always  do  this  out  of  fear.  Some- 
times it  will  be  because  he  desires  to  help  the  poor 
devil  of  an  advertisement  canvasser  who  has  a  wife 
and  family.  Sometimes  he  will  do  it  to  oblige  the 

185 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

publisher,  who  may  be  the  best  of  good  fellows.  But 
always  inevitably  the  result  will  be  the  same.  And, 
armed  with  this  achievement,  the  advertising  can- 
vasser will  go  round  to  other  publishers  and  assure 
them  that,  if  they  will  spend  money  on  advertisements 
in  his  paper,  he  will  secure  for  them  favorable  notices 
upon  the  day  when  the  advertisement  appears.  All 
this  is  very  natural,  a  slow  and  imperceptibly  spreading 
process  of  corruption.  But  it  is  bitterly  bad  for  liter- 
ature. Twenty-five  years  ago  it  would  have  been 
impossible,  fifteen  years  ago  it  would  have  been  im- 
possible. Now,  it  is.  There  are  exceptions,  of 
course,  but  every  day  they  grow  fewer.  The  fine  old 
newspaper  whose  advertisement  manager  proposed 
that  I  should  give  him  every  Thursday  a  six  -  inch 
double  column,  and  receive  in  exchange  my  favorable 
notice — this  fine  old  newspaper  had  just  a  week  before 
passed  into  new  hands!  And  nowadays,  alas!  almost 
invariably  new  brooms  sweep  very  dirty!  Cataclysmic 
and  extraordinary  changes  take  place  every  day  in 
the  world  of  newspapers.  In  one  week  two  years  ago 
I  received  visits  from  just  over  forty  beggars.  Every 
one  of  these  introduced  himself  to  my  favor  with 
the  words:  "I  am  a  journalist  myself."  One  of 
these  poor  men  had  a  really  tragic  history.  He 
bore  a  name  of  some  respectability  in  the  journal- 
istic world.  He  had  been  a  reporter  upon  a  midland 
daily  paper;  he  had  become  the  editor  of  a  Southwest 
local  journal.  One  day  he  was  riding  a  bicycle  outside 

186 


POETS    AND    PRESSES 


his  town,  when  a  motor-car  approached  him  from  be- 
hind, knocked  him  down,  and  as  he  lay  on  the  ground 
spread-eagled  it  ran  over  both  his  legs  and  both  his 
arms  and  broke  them.  The  car  went  on  without 
stopping,  and  this  poor  man  lay  for  eighteen  months 
in  a  hospital.  When  he  came  out  he  was  penniless, 
and  he  found  that  the  whole  face  of  journalism  had 
altered.  The  midland  paper  for  which  he  had  written 
had  passed  into  the  hands  of  Lord  Dash,  and  the 
entire  staff  had  changed;  his  south-coast  local  paper 
had  passed  out  of  existence;  so  had  the  great  London 
morning  paper  for  which  he  had  occasionally  written. 
In  another  newspaper  office  with  which  he  had  been 
connected  he  found  two  editors,  each  properly  engaged 
quarrelling  as  to  who  should  occupy  the  editorial 
chair,  and  neither  one  of  these  had  been  the  editor 
of  the  paper  when  he  had  gone  into  the  hospital.  In 
the  short  space  of  eighteen  months  all  the  men  he 
knew  had  lost  their  jobs  and  had  disappeared  from 
Fleet  Street.  That  is  why  one  will  receive  visits  from 
forty  beggars  in  one  week,  each  of  them  introducing 
himself  with  the  words:  "I  am  a  journalist  myself." 

It  is  this  terrible  insecurity  of  tenure  that  has  so 
brought  low — that  is  so  bringing  low — the  journalism 
of  England.  And  it  is  not  so  much  the  fact  that  the 
majority  of  our  journals  are  written  by  shop-boys  for 
shop-girls — for,  after  all,  why  should  shop-girls  not 
have  their  organs  ? — or  that  they  are  directed  by  ad- 
vertising managers  for  the  benefit  of  shop-keepers. 

13  187 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

What  is  really  terrible  is  that  the  public  is  entirely 
indifferent  to  the  fare  that  is  put  before  it.  It  is  as 
indifferent  to  the  leading  articles. 

There  is  an  old  skit  of  Thackeray's  representing  the 
astonishment  of  an  Oriental  Pasha  at  the  ordered 
routine  and  the  circumstances  of  an  English  middle- 
class  household.  He  sees  the  white  breakfast  table 
laid,  the  shining  coffee  and  cream  jugs,  the  eggs  and 
bacon  bubbling  in  their  silver  dishes.  The  family 
come  down  and  range  themselves  in  their  places 
around  the  table.  The  Pasha  utters  the  appropriate 
ejaculations  and  comments  at  the  strangeness  of  the 
scene.  Last  of  all  comes  down  the  master  of  the 
house.  He  puts  his  napkin  across  his  knees,  is  helped 
to  eggs  and  bacon,  and  then — comfortably  opens  his 
newspaper. 

"Bismillah!"  the  Pasha  ejaculates.  "Will  he  read 
through  that  immense  sheet  before  he  applies  himself 
to  the  work  of  the  day?  By  Allah!  it  is  as  large  as 
the  mainsail  of  his  Highness's  yacht." 

Mr.  Thomlinson,  of  the  sixties  and  seventies,  prob- 
ably did  not  read  through  the  whole  of  his  paper. 
But  he  did  read  the  leaders  and  the  foreign  corre- 
spondence, and  then  took  himself  off  to  business,  his 
wife,  with  her  key-basket,  attending  him  to  the  hall, 
where  she  cast  a  glance  at  the  hatrack  to  see  that  her 
husband's  hat  was  well  brushed  and  that  his  umbrella 
was  properly  folded.  (These  last  words  are  not  my 
own.  They  are  suggested  by  the  introductory  direc- 

188 


POETS    AND    PRESSES 


tion  to  a  lady  of  the  house  in  the  cookery  book  written 
by  Mrs.  Beeton — a  work  most  excellently  shadowing 
that  almost  vanished  thing,  an  English  home.) 

Mr.  Thomlinson,  if  he  did  not  ride  down  to  his 
office  in  the  city,  drove  there  in  his  brougham.  The 
remainder  of  his  newspaper  he  reserved  for  a  com- 
fortable and  half-somnolent  perusal  after  dinner 
while  Mrs.  Thomlinson  crocheted  and  the  young 
ladies  played  "The  Battle  of  Prague  "  upon  the  piano 
or  looked  over  the  water-color  sketches  that  they 
had  made  at  Ramsgate  that  summer.  Then,  with  his 
mind  comfortably  filled  with  the  ideas  of  his  favorite 
leader  writers,  Mr.  Thomlinson  would  take  his  flat 
candlestick  and  go  tranquilly  to  bed. 

When  I  was  a  boy  it  used  to  be  considered  a  reproach 
with  which  one  could  flatten  out  any  bourgeois  to  say 
that  his  mind  was  regulated  by  the  leader  in  the  news- 
paper. And  the  minds  of  most  of  the  middle  class 
in  that  day  were  indeed  so  regulated.  Nowadays  it 
would  be  almost  a  testimonial  to  say  of  a  middle-class 
man  that  he  read  anything  so  solid  and  instructive 
as  were  the  leaders  of  the  seventies  and  eighties.  That 
we  do  not  read  the  leaders  to-day  is  probably  to  our 
credit.  A  little  time  ago  I  was  in  the  editorial  room 
of  one  of  our  great  organs.  The  editor  was  giving  me 
his  views  upon  something  or  other.  A  clerk  came 
in  with  a  note.  The  editor  interrupted  his  flow  of 
speech  to  say: 

"Here,  you!    The  German  journalists'  deputation 

189 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

is  coming  to  London  to-morrow.  Just  write  a  leader 
about  it — I  am  too  busy.  Be  polite,  but  not  too  polite, 
you  understand.  If  you  have  not  time  to  write  it, 
get  some  one  else  to  do  it.  Anybody  will  do.  Tell 
them  that — not  to  be  too  polite.  Let  them  read  the 
back-files  for  what  we  have  said  already.  I  want  the 
copy  in  half  an  hour.'* 

You  will  observe  that  it  would  be  incorrect  to 
say  that  this  leader  was  going  to  be  written  by  a 
shop-boy  for  shop-girls.  It  was  going  to  be  written 
by  just  any  clerk  for  nobody  at  all  in  England. 
Unfortunately,  if  nobody  at  all  in  England  to-day 
reads  leaders,  this  is  not  the  case  in  foreign  coun- 
tries. There  was  once  a  time  when  the  Standard 
had  an  immense  reputation  abroad.  Continental 
papers  hung  upon  its  lips  and  attached  to  its  utter- 
ances on  foreign  politics  an  enormous  and  deserved 
importance.  And  some  such  importance  is  still 
attached  on  the  Continent  to  the  utterances  of  English 
newspapers,  though  the  Standard  itself  no  longer 
monopolizes  attention.  Thus  the  utterances  of  our 
gutter-press,  written  by  any  clerk  for  nobody,  and 
carefully  observing  the  editor's  direction  to  be  not 
too  polite — these  utterances  find  attached  to  them 
an  all  too  great  importance  in  the  newspapers  of  the 
particular  country  which,  for  the  time  being,  the 
proprietor  of  the  newspaper  has  made  up  his  mind 
to  bait.  In  England  they  produce  no  impression  at 
all;  but  abroad,  unfortunately,  they  do  a  great  deal 

190 


POETS    AND    PRESSES 


of  harm,  because  the  foreigner  can  never  really  get 
it  out  of  his  head  that  a  newspaper  represents  officially 
the  views  of  the  state.  This  same  editor  once  gave  one 
of  his  departmental  sub-editors  a  fortnight's  holiday. 
In  this  fortnight  he  was  to  study  the  works  of  Flaubert 
and  Maupassant,  in  order  to  acquire  the  quality  that 
is  called  "snap." 

This  may  appear  impossible,  yet  it  is  perfectly  true. 
But  what  would  have  happened  in  the  days  of  Delane  ? 
One  is  a  little  tired  of  hearing  of  Delane,  yet  there 
is  no  doubt  that  Delane  was  one  of  the  greatest  editors 
of  papers  and  one  of  the  great  forces  of  the  day.  He, 
indeed,  earned  for  the  Times  the  name  of  "The  Thun- 
derer." And  this  he  did  by  means  of  enormous 
industry  and  enormous  rectitude.  He  paid  unsleeping 
attention  to  the  quality  of  the  paper  in  all  its  depart- 
ments. If  the  musical  editor  wrote  too  often  or  with 
too  much  enthusiasm  of  any  given  prima  donna,  or 
if  he  suspected  that  it  was  being  done,  he  would  him- 
self take  the  opportunity  of  visiting  the  opera  and 
forming  an  estimate.  Or,  if  he  suspected  the  art 
editor  of  too  much  partiality  for  a  living  painter, 
Delane  would  take  a  great  deal  of  trouble  to  discover 

O 

what  was  the  general  consensus  of  opinion  of  the  art 
world  concerning  the  claims  of  that  painter.  This, 
of  course,  was  not  an  ideal  method  of  directing  crit- 
icism of  art.  Delane  himself  was  not  an  authority 
on  music,  and  the  general  consensus  of  opinion  on 
any  given  painter  will  tell,  as  a  rule,  very  hardly 

191 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

against  originality  or  new  genius.  Nevertheless,  it 
was  a  conscientious  thing  to  do,  and  quite  the  most 
practical  in  a  world  where  log-rolling  is  a  dangerous 
factor. 

And  if  there  was  only  one  Delane,  there  were  in 
London  of  that  day  at  least  twenty  editors  of  daily 
and  weekly  papers  to  whom  Delane's  ideals  were 
ideals  too.  An  editor  of  that  day  regarded  himself 
as  discharging  a  very  responsible  and  almost  sacred 
duty.  He  discharged  it  autocratically,  and  his  posi- 
tion was  of  the  utmost  security  and  tenure.  He  would 
have  about  him,  too,  a  force  of  august  anonymity, 
and  to  be  in  the  same  room  with  Delane  was  to  feel 
one's  self  hushed,  as  if  royalty  had  been  about.  Indeed, 
merely  to  take  "copy"  to  the  Times  office  was  to  feel 
one's  self  infinitely  humble  as  regarded  that  newspaper, 
but  nevertheless  a  functionary  of  importance  in  the 
rest  of  the  world. 

And,  as  with  the  editors,  so  with  the  leader  writers. 
These  also  were  august  and  serious  gentlemen.  They 
appeared  to  be  of  the  rank  of  editors  of  the  great 
quarterlies;  or  at  least  they  were  contributors  to  these 
revered  organs.  They  would  debate  the  topics  of 
the  day  with  the  editor-in-chief,  and  they  would 
demand  two  days  to  reflect  about  and  to  write  their 
article  if  it  was  one  of  any  importance.  In  those  days, 
in  fact,  no  editor  could  call  to  him  his  clerk  and  say 
that  he  wanted  a  not  too  polite  leader  in  half  an  hour. 

I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  the  actual  conditions  of 

192 


POETS    AND    PRESSES 


the  English  press  up  to  the  date  of  the  Boer  War 
were  altogether  ideal.  But  when  a  newspaper  got  its 
hand  upon  a  writer  of  ability,  of  genius,  or  of  rectitude, 
it  knew  what  to  do  with  him.  It  gave  him  plenty  of 
space.  It  kept  occasionally  an  eye  upon  him,  and  it 
left  him  very  much  alone.  Thus  there  arose  such 
really  great  journalistic  critics  as  W.  E.  Henley,  the 
late  R.  A.  M.  Stevenson,  or  G.  W.  Stevens,  though 
Stevens  lived  into  and  died  at  the  hands  of  the  new 
journalism.  And  these  men  were  really  great  in  their 
own  way.  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  Henley  was  a 
great  literary  critic  in  the  sense  that  Sainte  Beuve 
was  great,  or  that  fifty  Frenchmen  are  great.  But  he 
had  at  least  some  canons  of  art,  and,  right-headed, 
wrong-headed,  or  altogether  beside  the  mark,  he  roared 
out  gallantly  enough  the  ideas  which  for  the  moment 
had  possession  of  him.  And  I  have  always  considered 
that  the  final  proof  that  the  Tory  party  is  really  the 
stupid  party — the  damning  and  final  proof  was  that 
it  never  subsidized  Henley  and  never  provided  him 
with  an  organ.  Had  Henley  been  a  Liberal  he  would 
have  had  half  a  dozen  papers  at  his  feet.  But  the 
Tory  party,  without  a  qualm,  let  die  alike  the  National 
Observer  and  the  New  Review,  as  it  would  have  let 
die  fifty  periodicals  of  as  fine  a  genius  had  Henley 
had  the  strength  or  the  money  to  start  them.  But 
Henley  was  a  very  great  man,  and  the  circle  of  writers 
with  whom  he  surrounded  himself  was  very  valuable 
and  very  vital  until  the  death  of  Henley  and  the  coming 

193 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

of  that  never-to-be-sufficiently-accursed  war  set,  as  it 
were,  an  iron  door  between  the  past  and  the  present. 

To  Henley  and  his  circle  I  will  return;  they  took, 
as  it  were,  the  place  of  Pre-Raphaelism  after  Pre- 
Raphaelism  had  degenerated  into  a  sort  of  aesthet- 
icism  and  aestheticism  into  a  sort  of  mawkish  flap- 
doodle. But  the  point  was  that  the  older  journalism 
did  afford  place  and  space  for  such  vigorous,  authen- 
tic, and  original  writers.  Its  trouble  was  that,  unless 
an  editor  was  very  vigorous,  these  strong  critics, 
getting  a  too-free  hand,  would  go  off  into  riots  of  a 
perfectly  tremendous  log-rolling. 

Thus,  for  instance,  one  had  the  Athenceum  under 
the  editorship  of  Mr.  Maccoll.  Mr.  Maccoll  was  one 
of  the  most  charming  and  esoterically  erudite  of  men, 
but  his  mind,  I  think,  was  entirely  immersed  in  what 
is  called  symbolic  logic.  As  to  what  symbolic  logic 
was  or  may  be  I  have  not  the  faintest  idea.  One 
evening,  when  I  was  walking  home  with  Mr.  Maccoll, 
from  Doctor  Garnett's  at  the  British  Museum,  Mr. 
Maccoll,  with  his  gentle  voice,  large  person,  black 
kid  gloves — I  never  in  my  life  saw  him  without  the 
black  kid  gloves,  either  indoors  or  out — and  abstract 
manner,  kindly  tried  to  explain  to  me  what  this 
science  was.  But  all  my  mind  retained  was  a  vague 
idea  that  if  you  called  a  dog  a  tree,  and  a  tree  R,  and 
if  you  worked  it  out  as  an  algebraic  proposition,  you 
would  solve  the  riddle  of  the  universe.  At  any  rate, 
he  was  a  very  gentle,  kind,  and  abstracted  man,  and 

194 


POETS    AND    PRESSES 


it  was  a  genuine  pleasure  to  see  him  standing,  tall, 
blond,  and  bald,  in  the  middle  of  a  drawing-room, 
holding  in  his  black  kid  gloves  his  cup  of  tea,  and  his 
eyes  wandering  always  round  and  round  the  frieze 
just  below  the  ceiling.  And  I  have  this  much  to  say  of 
gratitude  to  Mr.  Maccoll,  that,  although  he  enter- 
tained the  deepest  hostility  to  my  father — a  hostility 
which  my  father  vigorously  returned — of  all  the 
friends  and  enemies  that  my  father  and  grandfather 
had  between  them,  the  editor  of  the  Athenaeum,  if  I 
except  Doctor  Garnett  and  Mr.  Watts  Dunton,  was 
the  only  one  who  ever  tried  to  do  me  a  good  turn. 

But,  under  this  amiable  and  scholarly  personage, 
the  Athenaum  was  a  wildly  uncontrolled  journal. 
The  chief  pages,  which  were  supposed  to  be  given  up 
to  literary  criticism,  were  actually  given  over  to  the 
control  of  one  or  two  antiquarians  and  archaeologists, 
who  used  them  for  the  purpose  of  battle-axing  all  their 
rival  archaeologists  and  antiquarians.  Pure  literature 
as  such  was  almost  entirely  left  out  in  the  cold,  except 
when  Mr.  Watts  Dunton  chose  to  take  a  hand.  Novels 
were  dismissed  with  a  few  sniffy  words,  nearly  al- 
ways dictated  by  the  personal  feelings  of  the  con- 
tributor. Then  there  would  come  endless  pages  of 
discussions  as  to  the  author  of  "Juntas — discussions 
that  spread  out  over  years  and  years.  Then  there 
would  be  the  late  Mr.  F.  G.  Stephens  battle-axing 
his  personal  enemies  in  the  columns  devoted  to  art 
criticism,  and  then  would  come  Mr.  Joseph  Knight 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

genially  and  amiably  praising  his  dramatic  friends. 
Thus,  under  the  captaincy,  but  certainly  not  under 
the  control,  of  Mr.  Maccoll,  the  Athenteum  drifted 
magnificently  along  its  way.  It  would  have  done 
credit  as  an  archaeological  organ  to  a  German  uni- 
versity town;  its  scientific  notes  were  excellent;  its 
accuracy  in  matters  of  fact  was  meticulous  beyond 
belief;  it  would  condemn  as  utterly  useless  a  history 
of  the  world  if  its  author  stated  that  Sir  John  Glen- 
quorch  of  Auchtermuchty  was  the  twenty-seventh 
instead  of  the  twenty-sixth  baronet.  It  was,  in  fact, 
a  paradise  for  bookworms;  but,  regarded  as  the 
chief  organ  of  literary,  artistic,  musical,  and  dramatic 
criticism  of  the  chief  city  of  the  world,  it  was  really 
extraordinary. 


X 

A    LITERARY   DEITY 

'"THE  log-rolling  of  the  seventies,  eighties,  and  nine- 
*  ties  might  be  sedate  and  scientific  as  in  the  case 
of  the  older  organs,  or  it  might  be  uproarious  and 
truculent,  as  it  was  when  Henley  and  his  gang  of 
pirates  came  upon  the  scene,  but  at  any  rate  it  meant 
that  some  sort  of  interest  was  taken  in  the  liter- 
ary world  and  that  the  literary  world  expected  that 
some  sort  of  interest  would  be  taken  in  it.  It  certainly 
did.  I  remember  my  amazement — and,  I  must  add, 
my  admiration — when  I  first  read  through  Rossetti's 
voluminous  and  innumerable  letters  to  my  grandfather 
at  about  the  time  when  he  was  publishing  his  first 
volume  of  poems.  They  were  really  magnificent — 
these  letters.  I  think  that  no  author  ever  in  such  a 
splendid  way  set  about  securing  favorable  notices 
from  the  press.  It  was  not  that  the  author  of  The 
Blessed  Damozel  was  not  ashamed  to  corrupt  the 
press;  he  simply  gloried  in  it  as  if  it  were  a  game 
or  a  thrilling  adventure.  He  might  have  been  Napo- 
leon conducting  a  successful  battle;  and  my  grand- 
father might  have  been  his  chief  of  staff. 

197 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

Not  a  single  organ  was  neglected.  It  was:  Tell 
Watts  to  get  at  So-and-So;  nobody  that  I  know  knows 
Dash,  but  you  might  reach  him  through  Blank. 
And  so  on  through  many  letters  and  many  hurried 
notes  as  ideas  came  up  in  the  great  man's  mind.  I 
do  not  know  whether  anything  of  the  sort  had  ever 
been  done  before,  but  I  am  pretty  certain  it  can  never 
have  been  done  more  thoroughly.  It  could  not  have 
been  done;  there  would  not  have  been  room.  No 
stone  was  left  unturned.  And  I  do  not  know  that  I 
see  any  harm  in  all  this. 

The  press  responded  magnificently,  and  Rossetti 
is  Rossetti!  Had  he  been  "Satan"  Montgomery  the 
press  would  probably  have  responded  as  magnificently, 
and  Montgomery  would  have  still  been  nothing.  The 
fact  is  that  the  great  thing — for  literature — is  to  get 
the  public  to  read  books  at  all.  In  that  case  the  good 
book  will  live  and  the  bad  book  will  die  after  it  has 
served  its  puffed  purpose.  For  that  reason  I  think 
we  should  never  grudge  a  popular  writer  his  success. 
If  a  man  may  make  a  large  fortune  out  of  quack 
medicines,  why  should  another  not  have  his  little  pros- 
perity from  quack  books  ?  Probably  some  percentage 
of  his  readers  will  go  on  to  read  something  better; 
the  great  majority  of  them  would  never  otherwise 
read  anything  at  all.  So  that  their  tastes  cannot  be 
spoken  of  as  having  been  debauched. 

The  only  thing  which  is  fatal  is  indifference,  and  of 
that  we  have  to-day  a  large  quantity.  We  have, 


THOMAS      HARDY 


A    LITERARY    DEITY 


indeed,  nothing  else,  so  that  a  fatal  lethargy  has 
settled  down  upon  publishers  as  upon  authors, 
upon  the  press,  and,  above  all,  upon  the  public. 
In  the  good  old  days  when  log-rolling  was  a  frequent 
and  profitable  adventure,  it  was  entirely  different. 
Those  were  fine  days  to  have  lived  through.  There 
remained  the  Pre-Raphaelites  throning  it  on  their 
altitudes,  their  spies  and  vedettes  making  thunder  in 
all  the  journals  when  Mr.  Rossetti  or  Mr.  Swinburne 
or  Mr.  Ruskin,  or  even  when  any  of  the  lesser  lights 
turned  over  as  it  were  in  his  Olympian  slumbers  and 
produced  a  new  volume.  There  was  Mr.  Meredith 
beginning  to  come  into  his  own.  The  Amazing 
Marriage  or  Lord  Ormont  and  His  Aminta  was  appear- 
ing as  a  serial  in  the  Universal  Review — that  fine 
enterprise  for  which  Mr.  Harry  Quilter  was  never 
sufficiently  praised  or  thanked.  There,  too,  Mr. 
Meredith's  Jump  to  Glory  Jane  was  mystifying  us 
not  a  little.  Mr.  Thomas  Hardy  also  was  coming 
into  his  own.  His  Pair  of  Blue  Eyes  was  in  all  our 
mothers'  mouths.  The  enormous  glory  of  Lorna 
Doone  was  still  illuminating  thousands  of  middle-class 
homes.  This  book  I  remember  to  have  read  over  and 
over  again  when  I  was  a  boy.  I  fancy  I  know  it 
nearly  all  by  heart,  so  that  now  if  any  one  would  start 
me  with:  "If  any  one  would  hear  a  plain  tale  told 
plainly,  I,  John  Ridd,  of  the  parish  of  Oare  .  .  .  ' 
or  "Now  the  manner  of  a  winkie  is  this  ..."  I 
could  go  on  with  the  quotation  for  pages.  Yet  I 

199 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

cannot  have  looked  at  Lorna  Doone  for  twenty  years. 
John  Inglesant  was  also  having  its  reputation  made 
by  means  of  Mr.  Gladstone's  postcards.  So  with 
many  other  books.  Was  there  not  The  Story  of  an 
African  Farm  ?  Did  not  Ships  that  Pass  in  the  Night 
bring  tears  into  the  eyes  of  innumerable  young  per- 
sons ?  Mr.  Anthony  Hope's  Doll  y  Dialogues  were 
appearing  in  the  Westminster  Gazette.  The  West- 
minster Gazette  itself  startled  the  enthusiastic  world 
by  appearing  on  green  paper.  It  told  us  all  that 
this  green  paper  would  be  the  salvation  of  all  our 
eyes.  I  know  I  ruined  mine  by  reading  of  Lady 
Mickleham  night  after  night  in  the  dimly  lit  carriages 
of  the  glamorous  Underground.  For  in  those  days 
there  was  a  glamorous  Underground.  It  smelled  of 
sulphur  as  hell  is  supposed  to  smell;  its  passages 
were  as  gloomy  as  Tartarus'  was  supposed  to  be, 
and  smokes  and  fumes  poured  from  all  its  tunnels, 
while  its  carriages  were  lit  by  oil  lamps,  so  that  little 
pools  of  oil  swayed  and  trembled  in  the  bottoms  of 
the  globe-like  lamp-glasses.  And,  standing  up, 
holding  my  green  paper  up  against  the  lamp,  I  used 
to  read  those  wonderful  dialogues  while  the  train 
jolted  me  along  through  the  Cimmerian  gloom.  Why, 
I  remember  going  up  to  Manchester  with  my  grand- 
father, and  in  the  train  sat  a  publisher  whom  my 
grandfather  spoke  of  as  young  Heinemann.  He  was 
relating  with  the  utmost  enthusiasm  that  he  had  had 
a  manuscript  sent  him  called,  I  think,  The  Scape  Goat. 

200 


A    LITERARY    DEITY 


This,  young  Heinemann  said,  was  the  finest  novel 
that  had  ever  been  written.  It  was  not  for  some  time 
afterward  that  my  grandfather  realized  that  the 
author  of  this  work  was  who  he  was,  and  that  he  him- 
self had  given  this  author,  as  it  were,  his  literary 
baptism  and  an  introduction  to  Dante  Gabriel 
Rossetti. 

My  grandfather,  I  remember,  regarded  The  Scape 
Goat  as  a  work  of  "genius."  His  literary  tastes  were 
peculiar.  Thus,  during  the  last  nights  of  his  life, 
when  I  used  to  go  into  his  bedroom  to  see  if  he  were 
sleeping  in  safety,  I  should  perceive,  resting  in  the  flat 
candlestick  beside  his  bed,  not  only  his  watch  and  his 
spectacles,  but  a  copy  of  Eugene  Sue's  Mysteres  de 
Paris.  This  book  he  was  rereading  at  the  suggestion 
of  Mr.  W.  M.  Rossetti,  and  he  considered  it  also  to 
be  a  work  of  "genius."  He  did  not  live  to  finish  it, 
but  died  in  the  night  shortly  after  he  had  laid  it  down. 
Rossetti,  too,  I  think,  regarded  Sue's  work  as  of 
"genius."  And  then  the  two  painters  would  never 
be  tired  of  reading  Meinhold's  Amber  Witch  and 
Sidonia  the  Sorceress.  But  then  Rossetti  regarded 
Flaubert  as  morbid  and  too  cynically  immoral  to  be 
read  by  any  respectable  painter-poet — such  a  queer 
thing  is  literary  taste! 

And  such  a  queer  thing,  too,  is  the  ascription  of 
morbidity.  Thus,  Doctor  Garnett,  a  high  functionary 
of  the  British  Museum,  a  very  learned  man  and  the 
writer  of  the  only  volume  of  really  scholarly  and 

201 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

ironic  tales  that  exists  in  the  English  language,  found 
that  Christina  Rossetti,  who  had  the  mind  of  a  me- 
diaeval ascetic,  was  "morbid."  Yet,  upon  the  whole, 
the  lesson  of  Christina  Rossetti  was  that,  although 
life  is  a  sad  thing,  we  must  put  up  with  it  and  regard 
the  trials  it  brings  us  as  being  a  certain  preparation 
for  a  serene  and  blessed  immortality.  Whereas,  upon 
the  whole,  Doctor  Garnett's  message  to  the  world 
was  one  of  a  scholarly  negation  of  pretentious  virtues 
— a  sort  of  mellow  cynicism.  Or,  again,  we  find 
Rossetti  a  man  of  as  many  irregularities  as  one  man 
could  reasonably  desire  in  one  earthly  existence,  a 
man  whose  poetry,  if  it  has  any  lesson  at  all,  teaches 
no  lesson  of  asceticism — we  find  Rossetti,  in  1870, 
saying  that  it  was  no  wonder  that  France  danced  and 
stumbled  into  disaster  when  it  could  produce  a  work 
so  morbid  as  Madame  Bovary. 

Yet  Flaubert  was  a  man  of  the  utmost  personal 
chastity,  of  the  most  bourgeois  honesty,  and  of  the 
most  idealistic  patriotism  when  his  sympathies  were 
aroused  by  the  tragic  downfall  of  his  country.  And 
Madame  Bovary  is  a  work  which  surely  more  than  any 
other  points  out  how  disastrous  from  a  material  point 
of  view  is  marital  infidelity.  Yet  it  shocked  Dante 
Gabriel  Rossetti. 

Flaubert,  on  the  other  hand,  considered  that  if  France 
had  read  U  Education  Sentimentale  France  would  have 
been  spared  the  horrors  of  the  debacle.  Maxime  du 
Camp  grins  and  giggles  over  this  idea  of  Flaubert's. 

202 


A   LITERARY    DEITY 


But,  reading  and  rereading,  as  I  do,  this,  the  greatest 
of  all  modern  romances,  I  can  understand  very  well 
what  this  blond  and  gigantic  writer,  with  his  torrents 
of  Bersgrker  rage  over  the  imbecilities  of  the  common 
mind — I  can  understand  very  well  what  he  meant. 
For  L'Education  Sentlmentale  is  romantic  in  that  it 
depicts  life  as  being  the  inverse  of  the  facile  romance 
of  the  cloak  and  sword  and  catch-word — the  romance 
of  easy  victory  and  little  effort.  And  France,  from 
the  downfall  of  Napoleon  I.  to  the  downfall  of  Napo- 
leon III.,  was,  above  all  other  lands,  that  of  the  catch- 
word and  the  easy  victory.  Governments  fell  at  the 
mere  shaking  of  the  head  of  a  purely  selfish  bour- 
geoisie. Charles  X.  fled,  Louis  Philippe  fled,  the 
Second  Republic  fell  before  risings  that  were  mere 
flocking  together  of  idle  spouters  of  catch-words. 
Victories  over  trifling  foes,  victories  in  Algiers,  in  the 
Crimea,  over  the  Austrians,  over  the  Mexicans,  vic- 
tories of  the  most  easy,  were  supposed  to  add  laurels 
to  the  eagles  of  Jena  and  Austerlitz.  And  all  the 
while  in  these  easy  revolutions  the  character  of  the 
French  people  grew  softer  and  more  verbose,  and 
under  the  smoke  of  these  easy  victories  the  character 
of  the  French  army  became  softer  and  more  a  matter 
of  huge  gestures.  It  was  these  facts  that  Flaubert 
painted  in  L'Education  Sentimental?.  It  was  these 
morals  that  his  facts  would  have  pointed  out  to  the 
French  people  if  they  had  read  his  book.  But,  indeed, 
L'Education  Sentimentale  is  too  inspired  by  contempt 
14  203 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

for  inanity  and  fine  phrases,  it  so  points  the  finger 
toward  the  road  of  sanity  and  fine  effort,  that  any 
nation  that  really  read  and  marked  it  might  well  find 
itself  mistress  of  the  world.  I  am,  however,  as  yet 
unaware  that  any  nation  has  betaken  itself  to  the 
study  of  the  affairs  of  Frederic  Moreau  and  of  Mme. 
Arnoux.  So  we  shall  have  to  go  on  building  Dread- 
noughts until  the  arrival  of  a  blessed  time  of  which  no 
omens  are  very  visible  in  our  skies. 

It  is,  indeed,  a  curious  thing,  the  criticism  that  one 
great  artist  will  bestow  upon  another.  Thus  Tur- 
geniev  acknowledges  the  receipt  of  L' Education  Sen- 
timentale.  He  writes  to  Flaubert:  "This  is,  indeed, 
a  work  of  genius"  in  the  proper  and  conventional 
manner.  And  then,  growing  really  pleased,  he  pro- 
ceeds to  tear  to  pieces  the  beautiful  little  pas- 
sage in  which  Flaubert  describes  Mme.  Arnoux 
singing: 

"Elle  se  tenait  debout,  pres  du  clavier,  les  bras 
tombants,  le  regard  perdu.  Quelquefois  pour  lire  la 
musique  elle  clignait  ses  paupieres,  en  avancant  le 
front  un  instant.  Sa  voix  de  contralto  prenait  dans  les 
cordes  basses  une  intonation  lugubre  qui  glacait,  et 
alors  sa  belle  tete  aux  grands  sourcils  s'inclinait  sur 
son  epaule.  Sa  poitrine  se  gonflait,  ses  bras  s'ecar- 
taient,  son  cou  d'ou  s'echappaient  des  roulades  se 
renversait  mollement  comme  sous  des  baisers  .  .  .  elle 
lanca  trois  notes  aigues,  redescendit,  en  jeta  une  plus 
haute  encore,  et,  apres  un  silence,  termina  par  un 
point  d'orgue." 

204 


GUSTAVE      FLAUBERT 


A    LITERARY    DEITY 


This  struck  Turgeniev  as  being  supremely  ridic- 
ulous, and  it  was  the  main  thing  which  did  strike  him 
in  this  enormous  and  overpowering  work.  It  was 
like  the  Athenaeum,  which  condemned  a  history  of  the 
world  because  Sir  John  Glenquoich  of  Auchtermuchty 
was  described  as  the  twenty-sixth  instead  of  the  twenty- 
seventh  baronet.  I  suppose  this  was  because  the 
Athenceum  critic  had  got  hold  of  a  guide  to  Auchter- 
muchty. Similarly,  Turgeniev,  living  in  the  constant 
society  of  the  Viardots,  and  more  particularly  in  that 
of  that  great  singer,  Pauline  Lucca — Turgeniev  had 
at  the  moment  in  his  mind  a  meticulous  admiration 
for  musical  exclusiveness.  Pauline  Lucca  would  have 
ended  her  songs  with  a  dazzling  cadenza — a  shower 
of  small  notes. 

Yes,  it  is  impossible  to  say  whether  Turgeniev  or 
Flaubert  were  the  greatest  of  all  novelists.  They  lived 
and  unfolded  their  unprecedented  talents  in  the  same 
years,  in  the  same  city,  in  the  same  circle,  filled  with 
the  same  high  ideals  and  high  enthusiasms.  And  this 
is  a  very  striking  proof  of  how  high  effort  in  the  arts 
flourishes  by  the  mere  contagion  of  contact.  It  is 
the  custom  of  grudging  Russophiles  to  declare  that 
Turgeniev  gained  nothing  by  living  in  France.  Or, 
even,  it  is  their  custom  to  declare  that  he  lost  a  great 
deal.  Nothing  will  be  truer  than  to  say  that  Tur- 
geniev was  born  with  a  natural  gift  and  a  natural 
technique  that  made  him  at  once  the  most  gifted 
and  the  most  technically  perfect  of  all  writers.  His 

205 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

first  story,  which  was  written  before  he  was  twenty- 
one,  and  before  he  had  ever  been  to  France,  is  as 
perfect  as  is  Fathers  and  Children  or  The  House 
of  the  Gentlefolk.  And  it  would  be  as  absurd  to 
say  that  Flaubert  or  Gautier  influenced  the  character 
of  Turgeniev' s  works  as  it  would  be  to  say  that 
Turgeniev  was  an  influence  to  Zola,  Maupassant, 
or  the  Goncourts.  Great  writers,  or  strong  person- 
alities, when  they  have  passed  their  impressionable 
years,  are  no  longer  subject  to  influences.  They 
develop  along  lines  of  their  own  geniuses.  But  they 
are  susceptible  to  sympathy,  to  encouragement,  to 
ideas  of  rivalry,  to  contagious  ambitions.  And  only 
too  frequently  they  have  a  necessity  for  a  tranquil 
and  sympathetic  home-life.  The  one  set  of  incentives 
Turgeniev  found  among  the  French  masters.  The 
other  was  given  him  in  the  home  of  the  Viardots. 
Such  an  existence  he  could  have  found  nowhere  else 
in  the  civilized  world  of  that  day. 

I  remember  Turgeniev  personally  only  as  a  smile. 
He  had  been  taken  by  poor  Ralston,  the  first  of  his 
translators  into  English,  to  call  upon  Rossetti.  Tur- 
geniev was  in  England  for  grouse-shooting,  to  which 
he  was  passionately  attached.  And,  not  finding 
Rossetti  at  home,  Ralston  had  brought  the  Russian 
master  to  call  upon  my  grandfather.  Both  Turgeniev 
and  Ralston  were  men  of  gigantic  stature — each  of 
them  six  foot  six  in  height,  or  something  like  it,  and 
I  cannot  have  been  more  than  two  foot  two  at  the 

206 


A    LITERARY    DEITY 


most — a  small  child  in  a  blue  pinafore.  I  must  have 
been  alone  in  the  immense  studio  that  had  once  been 
the  drawing-room  of  Colonel  Newcome.  At  any  rate, 
it  is  recorded  as  the  earliest  incident  of  my  checkered 
and  adventurous  career,  and,  moreover,  as  evidencing 
the  exquisite  politeness  that  at  that  time  had  been 
taught  me — I  hope  I  may  not  since  have  lost  it — that 
my  grandfather,  coming  into  the  studio,  found  me 
approaching  the  two  giants  and  exclaiming  in  a  high 
treble:  "Won't  you  take  a  chair  ?"  I  must  have  been 
one,  two,  or  three  years  of  age  at  the  time. 

I  do  not  know  that  the  anecdote  is  of  any  interest 
to  anybody,  but  it  pleases  me  to  think  that  thus  in  the 
person  of  Turgeniev  these  two  circles  touched  for  a 
moment.  For  that  other  circle  of  Flaubert  and  his 
friends  had  aims  very  similar — had  the  same  high 
views  of  the  priestcraft  of  the  arts.  Each  in  its 
different  way  influenced  very  enormously  the  life  and 
the  thoughts  of  their  respective  countries.  The  in- 
fluence of  the  Pre-Raphaelites  was  certainly  less 
extended  than  that  of  the  great  French  realists;  never- 
theless after  the  passage  of  half  a  generation  or  so  in 
the  form  of  aestheticism  this  influence  also  crossed  the 
Channel,  so  that,  in  France,  in  Belgium,  in  Russia, 
and  perhaps  still  more  in  Germany,  you  will  find  many 
houses  that  might  have  been  furnished  by  Morris 
&  Company — houses  where  the  cult  of  Burne- Jones 
and  Rossetti,  and  perhaps  still  more  that  of  Oscar 
Wilde,  is  carried  on.  These  seeds  have,  indeed,  been 

207 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

blown  to  the  ends  of  the  earth,  so  that,  taking  my  walk 
the  other  morning  through  the  streets  of  an  obscure  and 
sufficiently  remote  German  town,  the  first  thing  that 
struck  my  eyes  in  a  bookseller's  window  were  two 
large  and  not  very  good  reproductions  of  the  Saluta- 
tion of  Beatrice  and  of  Beata  Beatrix. 

In  somewhat  the  same  slow  manner  the  influence 
of  Flaubert,  Turgeniev,  and  their  followers  has  crossed 
the  Channel.  And  now,  half  a  generation  or  so  after 
their  death,  you  will  find  a  few  English  writers  who 
have  read  a  book  or  so  of  Flaubert,  and  perhaps  a 
thousand  or  two  of  English  men  and  women  who 
have  read  something  of  Turgeniev.  For  this  last  we 
have  to  thank,  in  the  first  place,  Mrs.  Constance 
Garnett,  whose  translation  of  Turgeniev's  works  has 
given  me,  I  think,  more  pleasure  than  anything  else 
in  this  world  except,  perhaps,  the  writings  of  Mr.  W. 
Hudson.  Whenever  I  am  low,  whenever  I  am  feeble 
or  very  tired  or  pursued  by  regrets,  I  have  only  to 
take  up  one  or  the  other  of  these  writers.  It  does  not 
much  matter  which.  For  immediately  I  am  brought 
into  contact  with  a  wise,  a  fine,  an  infinitely  soothing 
personality.  I  assimilate  pleasure  with  no  effort  at 
all,  and  so  weariness  leaves  me,  regrets  go  away  to  a 
distance,  and  I  am  no  more  conscious  of  a  very  dull 
self.  Mr.  Hudson  is,  of  course,  the  finest,  the  most 
delicate,  and  the  most  natural  of  stylists  that  we  have 
or  that  we  have  ever  had.  Perhaps  I  should  except 
Mrs.  Garnett,  who  has  contrived  to  translate  Tur- 

208 


A    LITERARY    DEITY 


geniev,  with  all  his  difficulties,  into  a  language  so  simple 
and  so  colloquial.  Each  of  these  writers  writes  with 
language  as  little  complicated  as  that  of  a  child. 
Word  after  word  sinks  into  the  mind,  pervading  it  as 
water  slowly  soaks  into  sands.  You  are,  in  fact,  un- 
conscious that  you  are  reading.  You  are  just  con- 
scious of  pleasure  as  you  might  be  in  the  sunshine. 
And  this,  for  me,  is  the  highest  praise,  or,  let  me 
say,  the  deepest  gratitude,  that  I  have  to  bestow.  If 
I  could  express  it  better  I  would,  but  I  find  no 
other  words. 

Turgeniev,  as  I  have  said,  is  little  read  in  England. 
I  think  I  remember  to  have  heard  the  publisher  of  the 
English  translation  say  that  he  had  sold  on  an  average 
fourteen  hundred  sets  of  his  edition.  Supposing, 
therefore,  that  each  set  has  been  read  by  five  persons, 
we  find  that  perhaps  seven  thousand  of  the  inhabitants 
of  the  British  Isles  have  an  acquaintance  with  this 
writer.  And,  since  Turgeniev  may  be  regarded  as 
one  of  the  greatest  writers  of  the  world — the  writer 
who  has  done  for  the  novel  what  Shakespeare  did  for 
the  drama,  Homer  for  the  epic,  or  Heine  for  lyric 
verse — and  since  the  population  of  the  British  Isles 
is  some  forty-eight  millions,  these  figures  may  be  said 
to  be  fairly  creditable. 

This  is  creditable,  for  it  means  that,  if  you  took  a 
walk  through  London  with  a  placard  on  your  back 
bearing  the  words,  "  Have  you  read  Turgeniev  ?"  you 
might,  during  an  afternoon's  walk  in  South  Kensing- 

209 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

ton,  receive  affirmative  answer  from  possibly  two 
people.  In  Hampstead  the  adventure  would  be  more 
profitable.  You  would  probably  find  at  least  ten  who 
responded.  That,  I  think,  is  about  the  proportion, 
for  it  must  be  remembered  that  South  Kensington  is 
the  home  of  pure  culture  in  our  islands,  whereas 
Hampstead  is  the  home  of  culture  plus  progress, 
rational  dress,  and  vegetarianism.  This,  of  course,  is 
why  Turgeniev  is  read  at  all  in  England. 

Being  a  Russian,  he  is  supposed  in  some  way  to 
help  you  toward  being  a  better  socialist — for,  in 
England,  we  do  not  read  for  pleasure,  but  when  we 
read  at  all  we  read  in  order  to  be  made  a  better  some- 
thing or  other.  That  is  why  you  will  find  ten  persons 
who  have  read  Turgeniev  for  one  who  has  read  Flau- 
bert. In  fact,  having  met,  God  knows,  hundreds  and 
hundreds  of  English  literary  people,  I  have  met  only 
one  who  has  read  the  whole  of  Flaubert's  works  or 
began  to  understand  what  was  meant  by  the  art  of 
this  great  writer.  And  even  he  found  L'Education 
Sentiment  ale  a  tough  proposition.  But  then  it  is  im- 
possible to  be  made  a  better  socialist  by  reading 
Flaubert,  and  there  is  a  general  impression  among 
English  writers  that,  to  read  him,  to  be  influenced  by 
him,  would  be  to  diminish  your  "price  per  thou." 
Indeed,  I  was  once  begged  by  the  tearful  but  charming 
wife  of  a  distinguished  Englishman  of  letters  to  desist 
from  advising  her  husband  to  learn  what  lessons  he 
could  from  the  French  master.  She  said: 

2IO 


A    LITERARY    DEITY 


"Billy  has  such  a  struggle  as  it  is.  His  work  isn't 
at  all  popular.  We  do  want  to  have  a  motor-car.  And 
then  there  are  the  poor  children."  And  the  poor  lady, 
with  her  tear-swimming  eyes,  looked  agonizedly  at  me 
as  if  I  were  a  monster  threatening  the  domesticity  of 
her  home.  For  the  sake  of  the  poor  children  I  am  glad 
to  say  that  Billy  did  not  take  my  advice.  He  never 
went  to  Mudie's  for  a  second-hand  copy  of  Un  Cceur 
Simple;  his  short  stories  are  becoming  increasingly 
popular  in  the  sixpenny  magazines.  I  believe  he  has 
his  motor-car,  but  I  do  not  know,  for  his  wife  made 
him  take  the  opportunity  to  quarrel  with  me  shortly 
afterward.  She  would,  I  think,  have  encouraged  him 
to  lend  me  money  in  large  sums;  she  would  have 
trusted  me  to  take  her  children  out  for  walks.  But  I 
had  threatened  the  most  sacred  thing  of  the  literary 
domestic  hearth;  I  had  given  her  husband  wicked 
counsel.  Almost  I  had  endangered  his  price  per 
thousand  words.  I  must  go. 

This  story,  which  is  perfectly  true,  has  a  moral  of 
the  deepest.  For  the  gradual  elevation  of  "price  per 
thou"  to  the  estate  of  the  sole  literary  God  in  England 
has  come  about  in  many  and  devious  manners.  In 
the  old  days  there  was  a  thing  that  was  called  a  pot- 
boiler. This  was  an  occasional  piece  of  inferior  work 
which  you  produced  in  order  to  keep  yourself  from 
starvation  while  you  meditated  higher  and  quite 
unprofitable  flights.  Your  mind  was  set  upon  immor- 
tality, and  from  posterity  you  hoped  to  receive  the 

211 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

ultimate  crown.  A  quarter  of  a  century  ago  this 
feeling  was  absolutely  dominant.  It  was  so  strong,  it 
was  so  dinned  into  me,  that  still,  when  I  really  an- 
alyze my  thoughts,  I  find  I  am  writing  all  the  while 
with  an  eye  to  posterity.  I  am  ashamed  of  myself. 
Anxious  to  be  a  modern  of  the  moderns,  anxious 
to  be  as  good  a  man  of  business  as  the  latest  literary 
knight,  or  the  first  member  of  the  British  Academy 
of  Letters,  whoever  they  may  be,  I  find  myself 
still  thinking  that  I  am  writing  for  an  entirely  un- 
profitable immortality.  I  desire  fervently  to  possess 
a  motor-car,  a  country  seat,  a  seat  in  the  House  of 
Commons,  the  ear  of  the  Home  Secretary,  or  a  bath 
of  cut  crystal  with  silver  taps  that  flow  champagne 
or  eau  de  cologne.  I  desire  immensely  to  be  influen- 
tial, expensive,  and  all  the  rest  of  it.  But  still  I  go  on 
writing  for  posterity. 

It  is,  I  presume,  in  the  blood,  in  the  training.  My 
great-great-grandfather  Brown  was  the  first  anti-lancet 
surgeon.  He  was  a  person  of  expensive  and  jovial 
tastes.  He  loved  port  wine  and  he  died  insolvent  in 
the  King's  Bench  Prison.  Frederick  the  Great  invited 
him  to  be  his  body  surgeon.  Napoleon  the  Great 
always  released  any  English  surgeon  he  might  take 
prisoner  if  he  could  prove  that  he  was  a  pupil  of  Dr. 
John  Brown.  Napoleon  considered  that  the  pupils 
of  Brown  were  benefactors  to  humanity.  But  Dr. 
John  Brown  died  in  a  debtor's  prison  because  he 
invented  and  stuck  to  the  surgery  of  posterity.  Ford 

212 


A    LITERARY    DEITY 


Brown,  his  son,  an  ardent  politician  of  a  Whig  com- 
plexion, quarrelled  violently  with  his  relative  and  patron, 
Commodore  Sir  Isaac  Coffin,  who  was  a  Tory,  and  lost 
alike  all  chance  of  promotion  in  the  Service  and  all  chance 
of  patronage  for  his  son  Ford,  who  had  been  inscribed 
as  a  midshipman  on  the  books  of  the  Arethusa  frigate. 
Ford  Brown,  therefore,  died  in  reduced  circumstances, 
an  embittered  man  because  of  his  devotion  to  the  polit- 
ical principles  of  posterity.  And  Ford  Madox  Brown, 
his  son,  died  in  reduced  circumstances,  still  painting 
away  at  pictures  the  merit  of  which  he  hoped  that 
posterity  would  see. 

But  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  he  was  above  painting 
the  humble  pot-boiler.  On  the  contrary,  his  efforts 
to  do  so  were  frequent  and  pathetic.  Thus,  for  quite 
a  long  time  for  a  guinea  a  day  he  worked  at  enlarging 
daguerreotypes  and  painting  posthumous  portraits  in 
the  portrait  factory  of  Messrs.  Dickinson.  At  the 
same  time  he  was  giving  twelve  years  of  toil  to  his  one 
large  picture  called  "Work."  During  the  Crimean 
War  he  tried  desperately  to  get  commissions  for  a 
series  of  twelve  popular  designs  with  titles  like  "The 
Bugle  Calls,"  "The  Troopship  Sails,"  "  In  the  Trenches 
Before  Sebastopol,"  "Wounded,"  and  "The  Return 
Home,"  which  represented  a  gentleman  with  only 
one  arm  and  one  leg  coming  back  to  the  embraces 
of  a  buxom  English  matron  and  five  children  of  vary- 
ing sizes.  But  he  never  got  any  commission  for  any 
such  work.  Mr.  Gambart  and  the  print-sellers  were 

213 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

much  too  wise.  Later,  he  attempted  to  paint  pictures 
of  the  dog  and  child  order,  made  famous  by  the  late 
Mr.  Burton  Barber.  In  this  attempt  he  was  eminently 
unsuccessful. 

Rossetti,  on  the  other  hand,  was  as  successful  with 
pot-boilers  as  Madox  Brown  was  the  reverse.  He 
drew  in  pastel  or  charcoal  innumerable  large  heads  of 
women  with  plentiful  hair  and  bare  necks  and  shoul- 
ders. These  he  sold  for  huge  sums,  giving  them 
Latin  or  Italian  titles.  Sometimes  the  occupation 
palled  upon  him.  Then  he  wrote:  "I  can't  be  both- 
ered to  give  the  thing  a  name.  A  head  is  a  head,  and 
that  is  an  end  of  it."  But  generally  he  found  names 
like  "Aurea  Catena."  Millais,  of  course,  occupied 
the  latter  years  of  his  life  with  practically  nothing  but 
pot-boilers,  except  that  toward  his  very  end  he  re- 
pented bitterly  and  tried  once  more  to  paint  as  he 
had  done  when  he  was  still  a  Pre-Raphaelite  brother. 
Holman  Hunt  was  as  unsuccessful  as  Madox  Brown 
in  turning  out  real  pot-boilers;  though  "The  Light  of 
the  World"  had  as  much  success  as  if  it  had  been 
painted  in  that  spirit. 

The  point  is  that  none  of  these  painters  and  none 
of  the  writers  who  surrounded  them  had  any  contempt 
for  money  as  such.  They  wanted  it,  but  it  was  not 
the  end  and  aim  of  their  existence.  And  "price  per 
thou"  not  having  been  invented  in  those  days,  they 
did  not  become  agonized,  thrilled,  or  driven  mad  at 
the  thought  of  this  deity. 

214 


Nor,  indeed,  did  this  goddess  so  much  perturb  the 
writers  for  whom  Mr.  Henley  was  the  centre.  His 
disciples  desired  money  perhaps  a  little  more  than  the 
Pre-Raphaelites,  and  revered  their  work  perhaps  a 
little  less.  On  the  other  hand,  perhaps  again  they 
really  tried  more  to  make  a  good  job  of  their  work. 
There  was  less  of  panoply,  mysticism,  and  aloof- 
ness; they  expected  less  of  the  trimming  of  their 
work  and  put  more  power  into  their  elbows.  They 
had,  too,  none  of  the  feeling  of  standing  apart  from 
the  common  herd  of  life.  They  wanted  as  much 
as  anything  to  be  men — upon  the  whole,  quite  com- 
monplace men,  indulging  in  orgies  of  tobacco,  whiskey, 
and  the  other  joys  of  the  commercial  traveller.  About 
love  as  they  handled  it  there  was  nothing  mystic; 
passion  justified  nothing.  It  was  kiss  and  pay  and  go, 
and  when  you  married  you  settled  down.  Dante  in 
his  relations  with  Beatrice  they  voted  a  bore,  but,  on 
the  other  hand,  they  admired  the  tortures  that  he 
invented  for  his  adversaries  in  hell. 

It  was  an  entirely  different  atmosphere.  There  was 
about  it  nothing  Italianate.  Most  of  Henley's  gang 
saw  no  shame  in  indulging  in  occasional  bouts  of 
journalism.  Many  of  them  were  content  to  be  called 
journalists,  and  did  not  mind  a  damn  as  long  as  they 
turned  out  jolly  good  stuff. 

I  confess  that  had  I  known  of  their  attitude  of  mind 
in  those  days  it  would  have  shocked  and  pained  me. 
Nowadays  I  think  they  were  rather  fine  fellows,  and 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

that  it  does  not  matter  much  what  they  did.  In 
those  days  they  seemed  to  me  to  be  strange  and 
rough.  I  came  out  of  the  hothouse  atmosphere  of 
Pre-Raphaelism  where  I  was  being  trained  for  a  genius. 
I  regarded  that  training  with  a  rather  cold  distaste. 
On  the  other  hand,  Henley  and  his  friends  seemed  to 
me  to  be  unreasonably  boisterous  and  too  loudly  cock- 
sure. Henley,  who  presented  the  appearance  of  a  huge, 
mountainous,  scaly,  rough-clothed  individual,  with  his 
pipe  always  in  his  hand  and  his  drink  always  at  his 
elbow,  once  damned  my  eyes  up  hill  and  down  dale 
for  half  an  hour  because  I  sustained  the  argument 
that  //  Principe  was  written,  not  by  Aretino,  but  by 
Machiavelli.  Henley  had  suffered  from  some  slip  of 
the  tongue  and,  although  he  must  have  been  perfectly 
aware  of  it  in  the  next  second,  he  chose  to  stand  to 
his  guns,  and,  as  I  have  said,  swore  at  me  for  quite  a 
long  time.  At  last  this  seemed  to  grow  monotonous, 
and  I  said:  "God  damn  you,  Mr.  Henley.  If  Machia- 
velli did  not  write  //  Principe  I  will  give  a  pound  to 
the  first  beggar  I  meet  in  the  street." 

I  expected  to  die,  but  Henley  suddenly  grinned, 
passed  his  tobacco  jar  over  to  me,  and  said,  "Of 
course  he  did,"  and  began  again  to  talk  of  Stevenson. 
He  talked  of  Stevenson  with  an  extraordinary  mixture 
of  the  deepest  affection  and  of  the  utterance  of  innu- 
merable grudges.  It  was  about  the  time — or  just  after 
it — that  his  article  on  Robert  Louis  Stevenson  ap- 
peared in  small  type  at  the  end  of  the  Pall  Mall 

216 


A    LITERARY    DEITY 


Magazine,  and  that  article  was  setting  the  whole 
town  agog.  I  do  not  know  that  the  conversation  with 
Henley  added  anything  to  my  comprehension  of  the 
matter.  But  the  repetition  of  Henley's  grudges  was 
a  much  pleasanter  thing  in  words  than  in  small  type. 
You  had  the  man  before  you;  you  were  much  better 
able  to  appreciate  from  his  tone  of  voice  where  he 
exaggerated  and  where  he  meant  you  to  know  that  he 
exaggerated. 


XI 

DEATHS   AND   DEPARTURES 

ETERARY  quarrels  such  as  separated  Henley 
and  Robert  Louis  Stevenson  are  always  rather 
tragic,  are  always  rather  comic.  They  have  about 
them  a  flavor  of  regret  such  as  distinguishes  the  older 
French  music.  That  they  are  usually  bitter  in  the 
extreme  is  due  to  the  fact  that  the  writer  possesses  a 
pen  and  the  power  to  express  himself.  He  possesses 
also  an  imagination.-  So  that,  not  only  does  his  mind 
make  mole-hills  of  grievance  assume  the  aspect  of 
mountains  of  villainy,  but,  with  his  pen  going  forty 
to  the  dozen,  he  sets  down  in  wounding  words  the  tale 
of  his  griefs.  His  griefs  may  be  nothing  at  ail- 
generally  they  are  so.  Sometimes  they  may  amount  to 
real  treachery,  for  the  artist  with  his  stretched  nerves 
easily  loses  any  sense  of  right  or  wrong  where  his 
personal  affairs  are  concerned.  Not  infrequently  new 
wives  will  break  up  old  friendships,  the  wines  being 
too  strong  for  the  otherwise  well-tried  bottle.  Now- 
adays money  sometimes  comes  in;  in  the  olden  times 
it  did,  too,  but  much  less  often.  I  remember  my 
grandfather  laying  down  a  rule  of  life  for  me.  He  said : 

218 


DEATHS    AND    DEPARTURES 

"Fordy,  never  refuse  to  help  a  lame  dog  over  a 
stile.  Never  lend  money;  always  give  it.  When  you 
give  money  to  a  man  that  is  down,  tell  him  that  it  is 
to  help  him  to  get  up,  tell  him  that  when  he  is  up\ 
he  should  pass  on  the  money  you  have  given  him  to 
any  other  poor  devil  that  is  down.  Beggar  yourself 
rather  than  refuse  assistance  to  any  one  whose  genius 
you  think  shows  promise  of  being  greater  than  your 
own." 

This  is  a  good  rule  of  life.  I  wish  I  could  have 
lived  up  to  it.  The  Pre  -  Raphaelites,  as  I  have 
tried  to  make  plain,  quarrelled  outrageously,  as  you 
might  put  it,  about  their  boots  or  their  washing. 
But  these  quarrels  as  a  rule  were  easily  made  up; 
they  hardly  ever  quarrelled  about  money,  and  they 
never,  at  their  blackest  moments,  blackened  the  fame 
of  each  other  as  artists.  One  considerable  convulsion 
did  threaten  to  break  up  Pre-Raphaelite  society.  This 
was  caused  by  the  dissolution  of  the  firm  of  Morris, 
Marshall,  Faulkner  &  Company.  Originally  in  this 
firm  there  were  seven  members,  all  either  practising 
or  aspiring  artists.  The  best  known  were  William 
Morris,  Rossetti,  Burne  -  Jones,  and  Madox  Brown. 
The  "Firm"  was  founded  originally  by  these  men  as 
a  sort  of  co-operative  venture.  Each  of  the  artists 
supplied  designs,  which  originally  were  paid  for  in 
furniture,  glass,  or  fabrics.  Each  of  the  seven  part- 
ners found  a  certain  proportion  of  the  capital — about 
£100  apiece,  I  think.  As  time  went  on  they  added 
15  219 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

more  capital  in  varying  proportions,  Morris  supplying 
by  far  the  greater  part.  Gradually  the  "  Firm  "  became 
an  important  undertaking.  It  supplied  much  furni- 
ture to  the  general  public;  it  supplied  a  great  number 
of  stained-glass  windows  to  innumerable  churches  and 
cathedrals.  It  may  be  said  to  have  revolutionized  at 
once  the  aspect  of  our  homes  and  the  appearance 
of  most  of  cur  places  of  worship.  But,  while  the 
original  partnership  existed,  the  finances  of  the  "Firm" 
were  always  in  a  shaky  condition.  It  paid  its  artists 
very  little,  or  next  to  nothing.  I  happen  to  possess 
my  grandfather's  book  of  accounts  with  the  "Firm." 
It  shows  that  he  supplied  them  with  something 
more  than  three  hundred  designs,  of  which  perhaps  a 
hundred  and  fifty  were  cartoons  for  stained  glass  and 
the  others  for  tables,  chairs,  sofas,  water-bottles, 
wine-glasses,  bell-pulls,  and  who  knows  what.  For 
these  he  was  credited  with  sums  that  at  first  were 
quite  insignificant — £i  IQS.  for  a  stained-glass  cartoon, 
ten  shillings  for  a  table,  half  a  crown  for  a  drinking- 
glass.  And  these  sums  were  paid  in  kind.  Later 
the  sums  paid  became  somewhat  larger,  but  were  still 
quite  inadequate,  if  they  were  to  be  considered  as 
ordinary  transactions  of  the  open  market.  I  think 
that  the  largest  sum  that  Madox  Brown  received  for 
any  cartoon  was  £5.  The  other  artists  received 
exactly  similar  prices,  whether  they  were  Rossetti, 
Mr.  Philip  Webb,  or  Mr.  Peter  Paul  Marshall. 
As  the  years  went  by  the  "Firm,"  though  it  extended 

220 


DEATHS    AND    DEPARTURES 

its  operations  enormously,  showed  no  signs  of  becoming 
financially  prosperous.  William  Morris  supplied  more 
and  more  capital  until,  although  for  those  days  and 
for  that  set  he  was  a  very  wealthy  man,  his  financial 
position  was  rapidly  becoming  precarious.  The  posi- 
tion was  thus  extremely  complicated.  Morris  had 
supplied  a  great  quantity  of  money;  the  other  artists, 
and  more  particularly  Madox  Brown  and  Rossetti, 
had  supplied  a  really  immense  amount  of  work,  partly 
for  the  love  of  the  thing  and  partly  because  they 
thought  that  they  would  ultimately  receive  adequate 
payment.  A  certain  amount  of  irritation  was  caused 
by  the  fact  that  Morris,  as  the  head  of  the  "  Firm," 
ordered  gradually  more  and  more  work  from  Burne- 
Jones  and  his  particular  friends,  and  less  and  less 
from  Madox  Brown  and  Rossetti.  This  was  perfectly 
reasonable,  for  Burne- Jones  was  a  popular  artist  for 
whose  designs  there  was  much  demand,  while  Madox 
Brown  and  Rossetti,  in  the  nature  of  things,  were 

'  O     7 

comparatively  little  in  request.  It  was  natural  and 
legitimate,  but  it  could  not  fail  to  be  wounding  to  the 
neglected  artists. 

The  day  came  when  Morris  perceived  that  the  only 
way  to  save  himself  from  ruin  was  to  get  rid  of  the 
other  partners  of  the  "  Firm,"  to  take  possession  of  it 
altogether,  and  to  put  it  in  a  sound  and  normal  finan- 
cial position.  There  was  here  the  makings  of  a  very 
pretty  financial  row.  I  have  only  stated  this  case — 
which  has  already  been  stated  several  times — in  order 

221 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

to  make  it  clear  how  nicely  balanced  the  position  was. 
There  was  no  doubt  that  the  "Firm"  could  be  made 
a  great  financial  success.  Indeed,  it  afterward  became 
so,  and  so  I  believe  it  remains.  Madox  Brown,  and  to 
a  less  degree  Rossetti,  considered  that  they  had  devoted 
the  labors  of  many  years  to  contributing  to  this  suc- 
cess. They  knew  that  the  reconstituted  and  successful 
"Firm"  would  commission  no  work  of  theirs,  and  all 
their  labors  had  been  very  inadequately  paid  for. 
Morris,  on  the  other  hand,  had  to  consider  that  he 
had  supplied  by  far  the  greater  amount  of  the  capital 
which  for  so  many  years  had  kept  the  "Firm"  going, 
and,  if  at  that  date  it  was  at  the  point  of  success,  this 
was  due  to  the  popular  quality  of  the  designs  which 
he  and  Burne- Jones  supplied.  The  legal  agreements 
which  constituted  the  "Firm"  were  of  the  haziest 
kind.  Nowadays  I  take  it  there  would  be  the  makings 
of  a  splendid  and  instructive  lawsuit.  But  Morris 
&  Company  passed  into  the  hands  of  William  Morris; 
Rossetti,  Madox  Brown,  and  the  rest  were  displaced, 
and  there  was  practically  no  outcry  at  all.  This  was 
very  largely  due  to  the  self-sacrificing  labors  of  Mr. 
Watts  Dunton — surely  the  best  of  friends  recorded  in 
histories  or  memoirs.  How  he  did  it  I  cannot  begin 
to  imagine;  but  he  must  have  spent  many  sleepless 
nights  and  have  passed  many  long  days  in  talking  to 
these  formidable  and  hot-blooded  partners.  Of 
course  he  had  to  aid  him  the  fact  that  each  of  these 
artists  cared  more  for  their  work  than  for  money, 

222 


DEATHS    AND    DEPARTURES 

and  more  for  the  decencies  of  life  and  good-fellowship 
than  for  the  state  of  their  pass-books. 

A  certain  amount  of  coldness  subsisted  for  some 
time  between  all  the  parties,  and  indeed  I  have  no 
doubt  that  they  all  said  the  most  outrageous  things 
against  each  other.  Some  of  them,  indeed,  I  have 
heard,  but  in  the  end  that  gracious  and  charming 
person,  Lady  Burne-Jones,  succeeded  in  bringing 
all  the  parties  together  again.  William  Morris  sent 
Madox  Brown  copies  of  all  the  books  he  had  written 
during  the  estrangement,  Madox  Brown  sent  William 
Morris  a  tortoiseshell  box  containing  a  dozen  very 
brilliant  bandana  pocket-handkerchiefs,  and  joined 
the  Kelmscott  House  Socialist  League.  Indeed,  one 
of  the  prettiest  things  I  can  remember  was  having 
seen  Madox  Brown  sitting  in  the  central  aisle  of  the 
little  shed  attached  to  Morris's  house  at  Hammer- 
smith. Both  of  them  were  white-headed  then;  my 
grandfather's  hair  was  parted  in  the  middle  and  fell, 
long  and  extremely  thick,  over  each  of  his  ears.  It 
may  interest  those  whose  hair  concerns  them  to  know 
that  every  morning  of  his  life  he  washed  his  head  in 
cold  water  and  with  common  yellow  soap,  coming 
down  to  breakfast  with  his  head  still  dripping.  I 
don't  know  if  that  were  the  reason;  but  at  any  rate 
he  had  a  most  magnificent  crop  of  hair.  So  these 
two  picturesque  persons  recemented  their  ancient 
friendship  under  the  shadow  of  a  social  revolution 
that  I  am  sure  my  grandfather  did  not  in  the  least 

223 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

understand,  and  that  William  Morris  probably  under- 
stood still  less.  I  suppose  that  Madox  Brown  really 
expected  the  social  revolution  to  make  an  end  of  all 
"damned  Academicians."  Morris,  on  the  other  hand, 
probably  expected  that  the  whole  world  would  go 
dressed  in  curtain  serge,  supplied  in  sage-green  and 
neutral  tints  by  a  "Firm"  of  Morris  &  Company  that 
should  constitute  the  whole  state.  Afterward  we  all 
went  in  to  tea  in  Kelmscott  House  itself — Morris, 
my  grandfather,  and  several  disciples.  The  room  was 
large  and,  as  I  remember  it,  white.  A  huge  carpet 
ran  up  one  of  its  walls  so  as  to  form  a  sort  of  dais; 
beneath  this  sat  Mrs.  Morris,  the  most  beautiful 
woman  of  her  day.  At  the  head  of  the  table  sat 
Morris,  at  his  right  hand  my  grandfather,  who  resem- 
bled an  animated  king  of  hearts.  The  rest  of  the 
long  table  was  crowded  in  a  mediaeval  sort  of  way 
by  young  disciples  with  low  collars  and  red  ties,  or 
by  maidens  in  the  inevitable  curtain  serge,  and  mostly 
with  a  necklace  of  bright  amber.  The  amount  of 
chattering  that  went  on  was  considerable.  Morris,  I 
suppose,  was  tired  with  his  lecturing  and  answering 
of  questions,  for  at  a  given  period  he  drew  from  his 
pocket  an  enormous  bandana  handkerchief  in  scarlet 
and  green.  This  he  proceeded  to  spread  over  his  face, 
and  leaning  back  in  his  chair  he  seemed  to  compose 
himself  to  sleep  after  the  manner  of  elderly  gentlemen 
taking  their  naps.  One  of  the  young  maidens  began 
asking  my  grandfather  some  rather  inane  questions — 

224 


DEATHS    AND    DEPARTURES 

what  did  Mr.  Brown  think  of  the  weather,  or  what 
was  Mr.  Brown's  favorite  picture  at  the  Academy  ? 
For  all  the  disciples  of  Mr.  Morris  were  not  equally 
advanced  in  thought. 

Suddenly  Morris  tore  the  handkerchief  from  before 
his  face  and  roared  out: 

"Don't  be  such  an  intolerable  fool,  Polly!"  No- 
body seemed  to  mind  this  very  much — nor,  indeed, 
was  the  reproved  disciple  seriously  abashed,  for  almost 
immediately  afterward  she  asked: 

"Mr.  Brown,  do  you  think  that  Sir  Frederick 
Leighton  is  a  greater  painter  than  Mr.  Frank  Dick- 
see  ?" 

Morris,  however,  had  retired  once  more  behind  his 
handkerchief,  and  I  presume  he  had  given  up  in 
despair  the  attempt  to  hint  to  his  disciple  that  Mr. 
Brown  did  not  like  Royal  Academicians.  I  do  not 
remember  how  my  grandfather  got  out  of  this  invid- 
ious comparison,  but  I  do  remember  that  when, 
shortly  afterward,  the  young  lady  said  to  him: 

"You  paint  a  little  too,  don't  you,  Mr.  Brown?" 

He  answered: 

"Only  with  my  left  hand." 

This  somewhat  mystified  the  young  lady,  but  it 
was  perfectly  true,  for  shortly  before  then  Madox 
Brown  had  had  a  stroke  of  paralysis  which  rendered 
his  right  hand  almost  entirely  useless.  He  was  then 
engaged  in  painting  with  his  left  the  enormous  pict- 
ure of  "WyclifFe  on  His  Trial,"  which  was  to  have 

225 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

been  presented  by  subscribing  admirers  to  the  National 
Gallery. 

This  was  the  last  time  that  Madox  Brown  and 
Morris  met.  And  they  certainly  parted  with  every 
cordiality.  Madox  Brown  had  indeed  quite  enjoyed 
himself.  I  had  been  rather  afraid  that  he  would 
have  been  offended  by  Morris's  retirement  behind 
the  pocket-handkerchief.  But  when  we  were  on  the 
road  home  Madox  Brown  said: 

"Well,  that  was  just  like  old  Topsy.  In  the  Red 
Lion  Square  days  he  was  always  taking  naps  while 
we  jawed.  That  was  how  Arthur  Hughes  was  able 
to  tie  Topsy's  hair  into  knots.  And  the  way  he 
talked  to  that  gal — why,  my  dear  chap — it  was  just 
the  way  he  called  the  Bishop  of  Lincoln  a  bloody 
bishop!  No,  Morris  isn't  changed  much."  It  was 
a  few  days  after  this,  in  the  evening,  that  Madox 
Brown,  painting  at  his  huge  picture,  pointed  to  the 
top  of  the  frame  that  already  surrounded  the  canvas. 
Upon  the  top  was  inscribed  "Ford  Madox  Brown," 
and  on  the  bottom, "  Wycliffe  on  His  Trial  Before  John 
of  Gaunt.  Presented  to  the  National  Gallery  by  a 
Committee  of  Admirers  of  the  Artist."  In  this  way  the 
"X"  of  Madox  Brown  came  exactly  over  the  centre 
of  the  picture.  It  was  Madox  Brown's  practice  to 
begin  a  painting  by  putting  in  the  eyes  of  the  central 
figure.  This,  he  considered,  gave  him  the  requisite 
strength  of  tone  that  would  be  applied  to  the  whole 
canvas.  And  indeed  I  believe  that,  once  he  had 

226 


DEATHS    AND    DEPARTURES 

painted  in  those  eyes,  he  never  in  any  picture  altered 
them,  however  much  he  might  alter  the  picture 
itself.  He  used  them  as  it  were  to  work  up  to.  Having 
painted  in  these  eyes,  he  would  begin  at  the  top  left- 
hand  corner  of  the  canvas,  and  would  go  on  painting 
downward  in  a  nearly  straight  line  until  the  picture 
was  finished.  He  would,  of  course,  have  made  a 
great  number  of  studies  before  commencing  the  pict- 
ure itself.  Usually  there  was  an  exceedingly  minute 
and  conscientious  pencil-drawing,  then  a  large  char- 
coal cartoon,  and  after  that,  for  the  sake  of  the  color 
scheme,  a  version  in  water-color,  in  pastels,  and 
generally  one  in  oil.  In  the  case  of  the  Manchester 
frescoes,  almost  every  one  was  preceded  by  a  small 
version  painted  in  oils  upon  a  panel,  and  this  was 
the  case  with  the  large  Wycliffe. 

On  this,  the  last  evening  of  his  life,  Madox  Brown 
pointed  with  his  brush  to  the  "X"  of  his  name. 
Below  it,  on  the  left-hand  side,  the  picture  was  com- 
pletely filled  in;  on  the  right  it  was  completely  blank 
— a  waste  of  slightly  yellow  canvas  that  gleamed  in 
the  dusky  studio.  He  said: 

"You  see  I  have  got  to  that  'X.'  I  am  glad  of  it, 
for  half  the  picture  is  done  and  it  feels  as  if  I  were 
going  home." 

Those,  I  think,  were  his  last  words.  He  laid  his 
brushes  upon  his  painting  cabinet,  scraped  his  palette 
of  all  mixed  paints,  laid  his  palette  upon  his  brushes 
and  his  spectacles  upon  his  palette.  He  took  off 

227 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

the  biretta  that  he  always  wore  when  he  was  painting 
—he  must  have  worn  such  a  biretta  for  upward  of 
half  a  century — ever  since  he  had  been  a  French 
student.  And  so,  having  arrived  at  his  end-of-the- 
day  routine,  which  he  had  followed  for  innumerable 
years,  he  went  upstairs  to  bed.  He  probably  read  a 
little  of  the  Mysteres  de  Paris,  and  died  in  his  sleep, 
the  picture  with  its  inscriptions  remaining  down- 
stairs, a  little  ironic,  a  little  pathetic,  and  unfinished. 

I  haven't  the  least  idea  of  where  Madox  Brown's 
fame  as  an  artist  to-day  may  stand.  It  is  impossible 
to  form  an  estimate.  I  am  certain  that  he  is  far 
better  known  in  France  and  Belgium  than  in  the 
United  Kingdom.  The  other  day  an  American  art- 
critic,  who  did  not  know  who  I  was,  but  was  anxious 
to  impress  me  with  the  fact  that  British  art  was 
altogether  worthless,  said  vehemently — I  had  been 
trying  to  put  in  a  word  for  Constable,  Gainsborough, 
and  Turner — said  vehemently: 

"There  was  only  one  English  painter  who  could 
ever  paint.  His  name  was  Brown,  and  you  probably 
never  heard  of  him.  He  painted  a  picture  called 
'Work.'" 

I  retired  from  that  discussion  with  decent  discom- 
fiture. 

On  the  other  hand,  when  I  was  hanging  the  pictures 
at  the  Madox  Brown  Exhibition  at  the  Grafton 
Galleries  the  late  R.  A.  M.  Stevenson  came  in  and, 
clutching  my  arm,  proceeded  to  whirl  me  round 

228 


DEATHS    AND    DEPARTURES 

in  front  of  the  walls.  He  poured  out  one  of  his  splen- 
did floods  of  talk — and  I  think  that  he  was  the  best 
talker  that  ever  was,  better  than  his  cousin,  Robert 
Louis,  or  better  even  than  Henley,  many  of  whose 
expletives  and  mannerisms  "Bob"  Stevenson  re- 
tained. He  poured  out  a  flood  of  words  before  each 
of  the  pictures,  going  to  prove  in  the  most  drastic 
manner  that  Madox  Brown  ought  never  to  have  been 
a  painter  at  all — he  ought  to  have  been  a  historical 
novelist.  On  the  following  day,  which  was  Press 
Day,  I  was  doing  my  best  to  explain  the  pictures 
to  a  crowd  of  journalists,  when  I  was  once  more 
seized  vehemently  by  the  elbow,  and  there  was  Steven- 
son. He  whirled  me  round  the  galleries  and  poured 
out  a  flood  of  talk  before  picture  after  picture.  This 
time  he  proved  as  completely,  as  drastically,  that 
Madox  Brown  was  the  only  real  English  painter  since 
Hogarth — the  only  national  one,  the  only  one  who 
could  paint,  the  only  one  who  had  any  ideas  worth  the 
snuff  of  a  candle.  And,  pointing  to  the  little  picture 
called  "The  Pretty  Baa-Lambs,"  with  the  wrhole  of 
his  brown  being,  his  curious,  earnest,  rather  beaver- 
like  face  illuminated  by  excitement,  he  exclaimed: 

"  By  God !  the  whole  history  of  modern  art  begins 
with  that  picture.  Corot,  Manet,  the  Marises,  all  the 
Fontainebleau  School,  all  the  impressionists,  never 
did  anything  but  imitate  that  picture." 

So  that  Mr.  Stevenson  left  me  in  a  confusion  that 
was  odd  and  not  so  very  unpleasant.  I  considered 

229 


MEMORIES    AND  IMPRESSIONS 

him  at  that  time — and  perhaps  I  still  consider  him— 
the  finest  critic  of  art  that  we  ever  produced.  On 
the  one  day  he  said  that  Madox  Brown  "could  not 
paint  for  nuts";  on  the  next  he  asservated  that  Madox 
Brown  was  greater  than  all  the  Italian  primitives, 
French  modernists,  or  than  Prometheus,  who  first 
brought  fire  from  heaven.  And  as  I  cannot  imagine 
that  Mr.  Stevenson  had  any  particular  desire  to 
please  me,  I  can  only  leave  the  riddle  at  that. 

Shortly  after  the  death  of  Madox  Brown  I  left 
London,  only  to  re-enter  it  as  a  permanent  resident 
when  twelve  or  thirteen  years  had  gone  by.  And, 
gradually,  all  that  "set"  have  died  off,  along  with 
all  the  Victorian  great  figures.  Ruskin  died,  Morris 
died,  Christina  and  my  aunt  Lucy  died,  and  Burne- 
Jones  and  only  Mr.  Holman  Hunt  remained  of  the 
painters.  And  yet  it  is  odd  how  permanent  to  me 
they  all  seemed.  Till  the  moment  of  Swinburne's 
death,  till  the  moment  of  Meredith's,  I  had  con- 
sidered them — I  found  it  when  I  heard  of  their  deaths 
— as  being  as  permanent  as  the  sun  or  the  Mansion 
House.  Thus  each  death  came  as  a  separate  shock. 
So  it  was  with  the  last  death  of  all  which  I  read  of— 
only  a  few  days  ago  while  I  was  travelling  in  a  distant 
country. 

It  had  been  a  long  and  tiresome  journey,  in  a  train 
as  slow  as  the  caravan  of  a  Bedouin.  We  had  jolted 
on  and  on  over  plain  after  plain.  And  then,  with 

230 


DEATHS    AND    DEPARTURES 

a  tired  and  stertorous  grunt,  in  a  sudden  and  how 
much  needed  shaft  of  sunshine,  the  train  came  to  a 
standstill,  wearily,  and  as  if  it  would  never  pluck 
up  spirits  again  to  drag  along  its  tail  of  dusty  car- 
riages. The  station  was  bright  pink,  the  window 
frames  were  bright  emerald  green;  the  porters  wore 
bright  blue  uniforms;  and  one  of  them  a  bright 
scarlet  cap.  In  the  background — but  no,  under  the 
shafts  of  sparkling  light  there  was  no  background; 
it  all  jumped  forward  as  if  it  were  a  flat,  bright  pattern 
covering  a  high  wall — there  was  a  landscape  in  checkers 
of  little  plots  of  ground.  The  squares  of  bare  earth 
were  of  brighter  pink  than  anything  you  will  see  in 
Devonshire;  where  the  newly  cut  fodder  had  stood, 
the  green  was  a  pale  bright  emerald.  The  patches  of 
tobacco  were  of  a  green  more  vivid;  the  maize  more 
vivid  still.  The  very  cocks  of  hay,  dotted  about  like 
ant-heaps,  were  purple.  The  draught  oxen,  bright 
yellow,  stood  before  the  long  carts,  painted  bright 
blue,  and  panted  in  the  unaccustomed  heat.  Peasant 
women  in  short  green  petticoats  with  blue  velvet 
bodices  and  neckerchiefs  of  bright  green,  of  sky-blue, 
of  lemon-yellow,  bore  upon  their  heads  purple  baskets, 
or  beneath  coifs  of  sparkling  white  linen  raked  the 
purple  hay  on  the  green  fields,  or  lifted  up  into  the 
blue  wagons  bundles  of  fodder  with  forks  that  had 
bright  red  shafts.  And  all  this  color,  in  the  dazzling, 
violent  light,  was  hung  beneath  an  absurd  blue  sky. 
It  was  the  color  of  the  blue  houses  one  sees  in  the 

231 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

suburbs  of  Paris,  and  contained,  blotted  all  over  it, 
absurd  pink  and  woolly  German  clouds. 

I  closed  my  eyes.  It  was  not  that  it  was  really 
painful,  it  was  not  that  it  was  really  disagreeable. 
All  this  richness,  all  this  prosperity,  seemed  so  stable 
and  so  long-established  that  in  our  transient  world 
it  suggested  a  lasting  peace.  But,  coming  out  of 
our  grays  and  half-tints  of  London,  where  nothing 
vivid  ever  occurs  to  disturb  the  eye,  it  was  too  over- 
whelming. It  was — and  the  words  came  onto  my 
lips  at  the  very  moment — too  brave,  too  Pre-Raphael- 
ite! It  was  just  as  if  Nature  had  set  herself  to  do  the 
thing  well,  and  had  done  the  thing  so  well  that  the 
eye  couldn't  possibly  stand  it.  Pre-Raphaelite!  That 
was  what  it  all  was. 

Desiring  to  rest  my  eyes,  I  turned  them  upon  one 
of  those  newspapers  that  are  so  difficult  to  read,  and 
there  was  conveyed  to  my  mind  the  message  : 

"Es  wird  uns  telegraphiert  aus  London  dass  der 
Mahler  Holman  Hunt,  der  Vater  des  englischen  Pre- 
raphaelismus,  im  83ten.  Jahre  seines  Lebens,  ges- 
torben  is't." 

("It  is  telegraphed  to  us  out  of  London  that  the 
painter,  Holman  Hunt,  the  father  of  English  Pre- 
Raphaelism,  to-day,  in  the  eighty-third  year  of  his 
life,  is  dead/') 

I  do  not  know  whether  there  was  something  tele- 
pathic about  Nature  that  she  gave  this  brave  Pre- 
Raphaelite  show  in  Hessen-Nassau  to  frame  for  me 

232 


HOLMAN      HUNT 


DEATHS    AND    DEPARTURES 

an  announcement  that  called  up  images  so  distant 
and  so  dim  of  a  painter — of  a  set  of  painters  who,  in 
their  own  day,  decided  to  do  the  thing  well — to  do 
the  thing  so  well  that  most  beholders  of  their  pictures 
still  close  their  eyes  and  say  that  it  is  too  much.  For 
the  odd  thing  is  that  these  Pre-Raphaelites  painted 
in  the  dim  and  murky  squares  of  Bloomsbury.  There 
was  nothing  Hessian  about  their  environment;  if 
they  were  not  all  Cockneys,  they  were  townsmen 
to  a  man. 

And  the  most  immediate  image  of  Mr.  Holman 
Hunt  that  comes  to  my  mind  is  enshrined  in  a  lamplit 
interior.  There  was  Mr.  Holman  Hunt,  resting  after 
the  labors  of  his  day,  with  the  curious,  vivid,  rugged 
head,  the  deep-set,  illuminated  eyes  that  were  per- 
petually sending  swift  glances  all  over  the  room. 
There  was  also,  I  know,  one  of  her  Majesty's  judges 
poring  over  the  reproductions  of  some  Etruscan  vases; 
and  there  may  have  been  other  people.  It  was  a 
tranquil  interior  of  rather  mellow  shadows,  and  Mr. 
Holman  Hunt,  with  the  most  ingenuously  charming 
manner  in  the  world,  was  engaged  in  damning — as 
it  were  in  musing  asides — all  my  family  and  their 
connections  and  myself.  He  was  talking  of  the  old 
times,  of  the  forties  and  fifties,  when  he  was  known 
as  Old  Hunt  and  Millais  as  The  Lamp  Post,  because 
he  was  so  tall.  And,  uttering  many  things  which 
may  be  found  now  in  his  autobiography,  Mr.  Hunt 
would  let  drop  sentences  like: 

233 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

"The  Brotherhood  used  to  meet  pretty  often  at 
Rossetti's  rooms,  but,  of  course,  Rossetti  was  a  com- 
mon thief.  .  .  ." 

"Your  grandfather  was  then  painting  a  picture 
called  'The  Pretty  Baa-Lambs/  but,  of  course, 
Madox  Brown  was  a  notorious  liar.  .  .  ." 

"These  details  may  be  interesting  to  you  when  you 
come  to  write  the  life  of  your  grandfather,  but,  of 
course,  you,  as  a  person  of  no  particular  talent,  setting 
out  upon  an  artistic  career,  will  die  ignominiously  of 
starvation.  And  so  Millais  and  I,  having  discovered 
the  secret  of  the  wet,  white  ground,  proceeded  to 
swear  an  oath  that  we  would  reveal  it  to  none  other 
of  the  brethren." 

And  so  distractedly — so  amiably,  for  the  matter 
of  that — were  these  damning  "of  courses"  dropped 
into  the  great  man's  picturesque  narrative,  that  it 
was  not  until  after  I  had  for  two  or  three  hours  left 
the  dim  and  comfortable  lamplight  of  the  room 
that  I  really  realized  that  Mr.  Hunt  had  stated  that 
he  considered  Rossetti  a  thief,  my  grandfather  a 
liar,  and  myself  doomed  to  an  infamous  and  needy 
death.  How  Mr.  Hunt  had  arrived  at  this  last  con- 
clusion I  do  not  know,  for  this  happened  twenty 
years  ago,  between  the  death  and  burial  of  Madox 
Brown,  I  having  been  sent  to  ask  this  friend  of  my 
grandfather's  early  years  to  attend  his  funeral.  I 
was  just  nineteen  at  the  time,  so  that  I  know  quite 
well  that  what  the  great  painter  meant  was  not  that 

234 


DEATHS    AND    DEPARTURES 

he  perceived  traces  of  incipient  villainy  upon  my 
countenance  or  of  decadence  in  my  non-existent 
writings,  but  that  he  really  desired  to  warn  me  against 
the  hardships  of  the  artistic  life,  of  which  in  middle 
life  he  tasted  for  so  long  and  so  bitterly.  Similarly, 
when  he  said  that  Rossetti  was  a  thief,  he  meant 
that  the  author  of  Jenny  had  borrowed  some  books 
of  him  and  never  returned  them,  so  that  they  were 
sold  at  the  sale  of  Rossetti's  effects.  And  when  he 
called  my  grandfather,  not  yet  in  his  grave,  a  notorious 
liar,  that  signified  that  he  was  irritated  by  the  phrase, 
"grandfather  of  Pre-Raphaelism,"  which  was  applied 
to  Madox  Brown  in  his  obituaries.  These  had  been 
circulated  to  the  halfpenny  evening  press  by  a  news 
agency.  An  industrious  hack-writer  had  come  upon 
this  phrase  in  a  work  by  Mr.  Harry  Quilter,  no  other 
writer  at  that  date  having  paid  any  attention  at  all 
to  Madox  Brown's  career.  The  phrase  had  afforded 
Madox  Brown  almost  more  explosive  irritation  than 
its  repetition  thus  caused  Mr.  Holman  Hunt.  For, 
rightly  or  wrongly,  just  as  Mr.  Hunt  considered  him- 
self the  father  and  grandfather  of  Pre-Raphaelism, 
as  well  as  the  only  Pre-Raphaelite  that  counted,  so 
Madox  Brown  considered  himself  much  too  great  an 
artist  to  have  been  mixed  up  in  a  childish  debating 
society  called  a  brotherhood,  and  invented  by  a  set 
of  youths  very  much  his  juniors.  But  now,  indeed, 
with  the  announcement,  "Heute  wird  aus  London 
telegraphiert,"  which  the  wires  so  generously  flashed 
16  235 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

to  the  ends  of  the  civilized  earth,  the  Father  of  Pre- 
Raphaelism  had  passed  away.  For  of  all  the  Pre- 
Raphaelite  brothers,  Mr.  Hunt  was  the  only  one  who 
fully  understood,  who  fully  carried  out,  for  better  or 
for  worse,  for  richer  or  for  poorer,  the  canons  of  Pre- 
Raphaelism.  It  was  Madox  Brown  who  first  painted 
bright  purple  haycocks — yes,  bright  purple  ones— 
upon  a  bright  green  field.  But  he  painted  them  like 
that  because  he  happened  to  notice  that  when  sunlight 
is  rather  red  and  the  sky  very  blue,  the  shadowy  side 
of  green  -  gray  hay  is  all  purple.  He  noticed  it, 
and  he  rendered  it.  It  was  a  picturesque  fact  appeal- 
ing to  an  imagination  that  looked  out  for  the  pictu- 
resque. Mr.  Holman  Hunt  rendered  things  with  the 
avid  passion  of  a  seeker  after  truth;  it  was  a  hungry 
desire;  it  was  a  life  force  pushing  him  toward  the 
heroic,  toward  all  of  the  unexplored  things  in  human 
experience  that  are  as  arid  and  as  bitter  as  the  un- 
explored fields  of  ice  around  the  Pole.  Just  as  the 
explorer,  robbing  those  august  regions  of  their  mys- 
tery with  his  photographs  and  his  projections,  is 
inspired  by  the  passion  for  those  virgin  mysteries, 
just  as  he  earns  at  once  our  dislike  by  penetrating 
mysteries  that  should  remain  mysteries,  if  we  are 
to  remain  comfortable,  so  with  Mr.  Holman  Hunt. 
Inspired  with  the  intense,  unreasoning  faith  of  the 
ascetic  for  the  mysteries  of  revealed  religion — inspired, 
too,  with  the  intense  and  unreasoning  desire  of  the 
ascetic  for  the  rendering  of  truth,  since  he  believed 

236 


DEATHS    AND    DEPARTURES 

that  truth  and  revealed  religion  were  as  much  identical 
as  are  the  one  in  three  of  the  Trinity,  so  Mr.  Holman 
Hunt  supported  the  fiery  suns  of  the  desert,  the  thirsts 
of  the  day,  the  rigors  of  the  night,  the  contempt  of 
his  compatriots,  and  the  scorn  of  his  time.  He  was 
endeavoring  to  prove  that  our  Lord  was  a  Semitic 
boy  or  an  adult  Jew  inspired  with  the  ecstasy  of  a 
modern  French  anarchist,  that  His  Mother  was  a 
Bedouin  woman  of  no  particular  distinction,  or  that 
the  elders  in  the  Temple  were  a  set  of  Semitic  sheiks 
dressed  in  aniline-dyed  Manchester  goods,  burnouses, 
packed  together  in  wooden  tabernacles  beneath  a 
remorseless  sun.  This  was  the  message  of  Mr.  Holman 
Hunt  to  his  generation,  a  message  surely  very  salutary 
and  very  useful.  For  of  its  kind,  and  as  far  as  it  went, 
it  meant  clearness  of  thought,  and  clearness  of  thought 
in  any  department  of  life  is  the  most  valuable  thing 
that  a  man  can  give  to  his  day.  The  painter  of  "The 
Light  of  the  World"  dealt  a  very  hard  blow  to  the 
fashionable  religion  of  his  day.  This  the  world  of 
his  youth  understood  very  well.  It  declared  Mr. 
Hunt  to  be  an  atheist,  and,  with  Charles  Dickens 
at  its  head,  cried  to  the  government  for  the  imprison- 
ment of  Mr.  Hunt  and  his  brethren. 

These  things  are,  I  suppose,  a  little  forgotten  now 
— or  perhaps  they  all  repose  together  on  that  hill 
where  grows  the  herb  Oblivion.  I  don't  know. 
But  round  the  romantic  home  of  my  childhood  the 
opponents  of  Pre-Raphaelism  seemed  still  to  stalk 

237 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

like  assassins  with  knives.  There  was  a  sort  of  Blue- 
beard called  Frank  Stone,  R.A.  God  alone  knows 
nowadays  who  Frank  Stone,  R.A.,  was!  But  Frank 
Stone  said  in  the  Athenaeum  of  the  year  of  grace  1850 
that  the  flesh  of  Pre-Raphaelite  pictures  was  painted 
with  strawberry  jam.  There  was  a  veritable  Giant 
Blunderbore  called  Grant,  P.  R.A. — who  in  the  world 
was  Grant,  P. R.A.  ? — who,  with  forty  thieves,  all 
R.A.s,  immolated  the  innocent  pictures  of  Holman 
Hunt,  Millais,  D.  G.  R.,  Brown,  and  Collinson — who 
sent  them  home  ripped  up  with  nails,  who  never 
returned  them  at  all,  or  who  hung  them  next  the  ceiling 
in  gloomy  rooms  one  hundred  and  forty  feet  high. 
That,  at  least,  was  my  early  picture  of  the  horrors 
that  the'Pre-Raphaelites  had  to  endure. 

And  the  public  certainly  took  its  share,  too.  The 
good,  indolent  public  of  that  day  was  not  too  indolent 
to  take  an  interest  in  pictures,  and  it  certainly  very 
hotly  disliked  anything  that  had  P.R.B.  attached  to  it, 
perhaps  because  it  was  used  to  things  with  P.  R.A. 
(Who  was  Grant,  P.  R.A.  ?)  People  in  those  days, 
like  people  to-day,  had  tired  eyes.  They  wanted 
nice,  comfortable  half-tones.  They  wanted  undis- 
turbing  pictures  in  which  flesh,  trees,  houses,  castles, 
the  sky  and  the  sea  alike  appeared  to  have  been 
painted  in  pea-soup.  Consequently,  hay  that  appeared 
purple  in  the  shadows,  and  flesh  that  seemed  to  have 
been  painted  with  strawberry  jam,  upset  them  very 
much.  They  were  simple,  earnest  people,  those  early 

238 


DEATHS    AND    DEPARTURES 

Victorians,  and  had  not  yet  learned  the  trick  of  avoiding 
disturbing  thoughts  and  sights.  Perhaps  it  was  that 
the  picture  postcard  had  not  yet  been  invented.  It  is 
incredible  nowadays  to  think  that  any  one  would 
be  in  the  least  disturbed  if  a  painter  as  great  as  Velas- 
quez should  come  along  and  paint  you  a  scarlet  land- 
scape with  a  pea-green  sky.  Nowadays  we  should  care 
nothing  at  all.  Only  if  he  pushed  himself  really  well, 
he  would  find  himself  elected  A.R.A.  at  the  third 
attempt,  and  his  pictures  would  be  bought  by  a  doctor 
in  Harley  Street.  He  would  be  celebrated  in  a  small 
afternoon  tea  circle.  But  the  great  public  would  never 
hear  of  him,  and  would  never  be  disturbed  by  his 
scarlet  grass  and  green  sky.  We  should  not  indeed 
really  care  two  pins  if  the  president  of  the  Royal 
Association  should  declare  that  the  grass  is  bright 
scarlet  and  the  sky  green.  We  should  just  want  to 
go  on  playing  bridge. 

But  the  public  of  the  Pre-Raphaelites  was  really 
worried.  It  felt  that  if  these  fellows  were  right,  its 
eyesight  must  be  wrong,  and  there  is  nothing  more 
disturbing!  It  desired,  therefore,  that  these  painters 
should  be  suppressed.  It  didn't  want  them  only  to 
be  ignored.  They  were  disturbers  of  great  principles. 
If  they  began  by  declaring  that  flesh  looked  like 
strawberry  jam,  when  all  the  world  knew  that  it 
looked  like  pea-soup,  they  would  begin  next  to  impugn 
the  British  Constitution,  the  morality  of  the  Prince 
Consort,  the  Times  newspaper,  the  Nonconformist 

239 


MEMORIES    AND  IMPRESSIONS 

conscience,  the  bench  of  Bishops,  and  the  beauty  of 
the  crinoline.  There  would  be  no  knowing  where 
they  wouldn't  get  to. 

And,  indeed,  the  worried  public  was  perfectly 
right.  Pre-Raphaelism  may  or  may  not  have  been 
important  in  the  history  of  modern  art;  it  was  all- 
important  in  the  development  of  modern  thought. 
The  amiable  muddle-headedness  of  the  crinoline 
period  was  perfectly  right  to  be  horribly  worried 
when  Millais  exhibited  a  picture  showing  Christ 
obedient  to  His  parents.  You  have  to  consider 
that  in  those  days  it  was  blasphemous,  indecent,  and 
uncomfortable  to  think  about  sacred  personages  at  all. 
No  one  really  liked  to  think  about  the  Redeemer, 
and  Millais  showed  them  the  Virgin  kissing  her  Son. 
According  to  Victorian  Protestant  ideas  the  Mother 
of  our  Lord  was  a  person  whom  you  never  mentioned 
at  all.  But  Millais  dragged  her  right  into  the  fore- 
ground. You  couldn't  get  away  from  her.  She  was 
kissing  her  little  Son,  and  her  little  Son  was  obedient 
to  her.  Adolescence,  family  affection,  subjection  to 
His  mother  and  father,  or  early  occupations — all  these 
things  were  obviously  logical,  but  were  very  disturb- 
ing. They  meant  all  sorts  of  revisions  of  judgment. 
It  was  not  only  that  flesh  looked  like  strawberry  jam, 
but  that  the  Saviour  was  a  man  with  necessities,  the 
craving  for  sympathy,  and  the  vulnerability  of  a  man. 
These  facts  Millais  forced  upon  the  attention  of  the 
public. 

240 


SIR      JOHN       MILLAIS 


DEATHS    AND    DEPARTURES 

And  not  being  of  the  stern  temper  of  Mr.  Hunt, 
Millais  bent  before  the  storm  of  popular  opinion. 
He  was  afraid  that  Charles  Dickens  would  get  him 
imprisoned.  He  changed  the  figure  of  the  Virgin 
so  that  no  longer  does  she  comfort  her  Son  with  a 
kiss.  Millais  could  alter  his  picture,  but  nothing 
in  this  world  could  ever  have  forced  Mr.  Hunt  to 
bend.  In  consequence,  Millais,  a  very  great  painter, 
climbed  an  easy  road  to  affluence,  and  died  in  the 
chair  once  occupied  by  Grant,  P.R.A.  Mr.  Hunt 
pursuing  his  sterner  course,  seeking  avidly  for  truth 
as  it  must  have  appeared,  was  for  long  years  shunned 
by  patrons,  and  hard  put  to  it  to  live  at  all.  There 
have,  I  think,  been  few  such  struggles  in  the  cause 
of  any  conscience,  and  never  with  such  a  fierce  and 
iron  determination  has  any  painter,  in  the  teeth  of 
a  violent  opposition,  fettered  his  art  so  to  serve  the 
interests  of  religion  and  of  truth. 

This  religiosity  which  Mr.  Holman  Hunt,  before 
even  Darwin,  Huxley,  and  other  Victorian  figures, 
so  effectively  destroyed,  was  one  of  the  scourges 
of  the  dismal  period  which  to-day  we  call  the  Victo- 
rian era.  And  if  Mr.  Hunt  destroyed  the  image  of 
Simon  Peter  as  the  sort  of  artist's  model  that  you 
see  on  the  steps  of  Calabrian  churches,  furtively 
combing  out,  with  the  aid  of  a  small,  round  mirror, 
long  white  hairs  depending  from  his  head  and  face 
— these  hairs  being  the  only  portion  of  him  that  has 
ever  been  washed  since  his  birth — if  Mr.  Hunt  de- 

241 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

stroyed  this  figure,  with  its  attitudes  learned  on  the 
operatic  stage,  its  blanket  revealing  opulently  moulded 
forms,  and  its  huge  property  keys  extended  toward 
a  neo-Gothic  heaven — if  Mr.  Hunt  gave  us  instead 
(I  don't  know  that  he  ever  did,  but  he  may  have  done) 
a  Jewish  fisherman  pulling  up  dirty-looking  fish  on 
the  shores  of  a  salt-encrusted  and  desolate  lake — 
Mr.  Hunt,  in  the  realms  of  modern  thought,  enor- 
mously aided  the  discovery  of  wireless  telegraphy, 
and  in  no  way  damaged  the  prestige  of  the  occupant 
of  St.  Peter's  chair. 

This  truism  may  appear  a  paradox.  And  yet 
nothing  is  more  true  than  that  clearness  of  thought 
in  one  department  of  life  stimulates  clearness  of 
thought  in  another.  The  great  material  develop- 
ments of  the  end  of  last  century  did  not  only  succeed 
the  great  realistic  developments  that  had  preceded 
them  in  the  arts.  The  one  was  the  logical  corollary 
of  the  other.  Just  as  you  cannot  have  a  healthy 
body  in  which  one  of  the  members  is  unsound,  so 
you  cannot  have  a  healthy  national  life  in  the  realms 
of  thought  unless  in  all  the  departments  of  life  you 
have  sincere  thinkers,  and  this  is  what  Mr.  Hunt 
undoubtedly  was — a  sincere  thinker.  To  say  that  he 
was  the  greatest  painter  of  his  day  might  be  super- 
fluous; he  was  certainly  the  most  earnest  beyond  all 
comparison.  That  we  should  dislike  the  vividness 
of  his  color  is  perhaps  the  defect  of  our  degenerate 
eyes,  which  see  too  little  of  the  sunlight.  And  such 

242 


DEATHS    AND    DEPARTURES 

a  painting  as  that  of  the  strayed  sheep  on  the  edge  of 
the  Fairlight  cliff,  near  Pitt — such  a  painting  is  sufficient 
to  establish  the  painter's  claims  to  gifts  of  the  very 
greatest.  You  have  the  sunlit  sheep,  you  have  the 
dangerous  verge  of  the  hill,  you  have  the  sea  far  below, 
and  from  these  things  you  find  awakened  in  you  such 
emotions  as  Providence  has  rendered  you  capable  of. 
This,  without  doubt,  is  the  province  of  art — a  province 
which  perhaps  Mr.  Hunt,  in  his  hunger  and  thirst 
after  righteousness,  unduly  neglected. 

Of  pictures  of  his  at  all  in  this  absolute  genre,  I 
can  recall  otherwise  only  one,  representing  the  deck 
of  a  steamer  at  night.  Mr.  Hunt,  in  fact,  set  himself 
the  task  of  being  rather  a  pioneer  than  an  artist. 
His  fame,  the  bulking  of  his  personality  in  the  eyes 
of  posterity,  as  with  all  other  pioneers,  will  no  doubt 
suffer.  But  when  he  gave  Mr.  Gambart  what  Mr. 
Gambart  complained  was  "a  great  ugly  goat"  instead 
of  a  pretty,  religious  picture,  with  epicene  angels, 
curled  golden  hair  and  long  nightgowns,  Mr.  Hunt 
was  very  certainly  benefiting  the  life  of  his  day. 
And,  indeed,  this  is  a  terrifying  and  suggestive  pict- 
ure. But  this  great  man  cared  very  little  for  beauty, 
which  is  not  that  which,  by  awakening  untabulated 
and  indefinite  emotions,  makes,  indefinitely,  more 
proper  men  of  us.  Had  he  cared  more  for  this  he 
would  have  been  a  greater  artist;  he  might  have  been 
a  smaller  man.  Beauty,  I  think,  he  never  once  men- 
tions in  his  autobiography.  But  truth  and  righteous- 

243 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

ness,  as  he  understood  it,  were  always  on  his  lips  as 
they  were  always  in  his  heart.  In  spite  of  the  acerbity 
of  his  utterances,  in  spite  of  the  apparent  egotism 
of  his  autobiography,  which  to  the  unthinking  might 
appear  a  bitterly  vainglorious  book,  I  am  perfectly 
ready  to  declare  myself  certain  that  Mr.  Holman  Hunt 
was,  in  the  more  subtle  sense,  an  eminently  unselfish 
man.  The  "I"  that  is  so  eternal  in  his  autobiography 
is  not  the  "I"  that  was  William  Holman  Hunt.  It 
was  all  that  he  stood  for — the  principles,  the  hard  life, 
the  bitter  endurance,  the  splendid  record  of  young 
friendships,  the  aims,  the  achievements.  It  was  this 
that  Mr.  Hunt  desired  to  have  acknowledged.  In  his 
autobiography  he  did  himself  perhaps  less  than  jus- 
tice; in  his  paintings,  too,  he  did  himself  perhaps  less 
than  justice;  but  in  the  whole  course  of  his  life,  from 
his  strugglings  away  from  the  merchant's  stool  to  his 
death,  which  is  "telegraphed  to  us"  in  the  obscurest 
of  Hessian  villages,  he  never  betrayed  his  ascetic's 
passion.  It  was  to  this  passion  that  his  egotism  was  a 
tribute.  From  his  point  of  view,  Rossetti  was  not  a 
good  man,  because  he  was  not  a  religious  painter 
who  had  journeyed  into  Palestine  in  search  of  truth. 
He  never  even  went  to  Florence  to  see  where  Beatrice 
lived.  If  Mr.  Hunt  called  Rossetti  a  thief,  it  was 
because  he  desired  to  express  this  artistically  immoral 
fact,  and  he  expressed  it  clumsily  as  one  not  a  master 
of  words.  And,  similarly,  if  he  called  Madox  Brown 
a  liar,  it  was  because  Madox  Brown  was  not  a  painter 

244 


DEATHS    AND    DEPARTURES 

of  his  school  of  religious  thought.  His  aim  was  not 
to  prevent  other  persons  buying  pictures  of  Madox 
Brown  or  Rossetti;  his  aim  was  not  to  prevent  Madox 
Brown  or  Rossetti  prospering,  or  even  becoming  presi- 
dents of  the  Royal  Academy.  He  desired  to  point  out 
that  the  only  way  to  aesthetic  salvation  was  to  be  a 
believing  Pre-Raphaelite.  And  there  was  only  one 
Pre-Raphaelite — that  was  Mr.  Holman  Hunt.  Any 
one  without  his  faith  must,  he  felt,  be  a  bad  man. 
And  in  a  dim  and  muddled  way  he  tried  to  express  it. 
At  other  times  he  would  call  these  rival  painters  the 
best  and  noblest  of  fellows,  or  the  one  man  in  the 
world  to  whom  to  go  for  advice  or  sympathy.  And  this 
indeed  was  the  main  note  of  his  life,  he  himself  having 
been  so  companionable,  as  fine  a  fellow,  and  as  good 
to  go  to  for  advice.  But,  being  a  painter,  he  had  to 
look  for  shadows,  and  not  being  much  of  a  hand  with 
the  pen  or  the  tongue,  if  he  could  not  find  them  he 
had  to  invent  them.  That,  in  the  end,  was  the  bottom 
of  the  matter. 

I  permit  myself  these  words  upon  a  delicate  sub- 
ject, since  Mr.  Hunt's  autobiography,  which  must 
necessarily  be  his  most  lasting  personal  memorial, 
does  so  very  much  less  than  justice  to  the  fineness 
of  his  nature.  This  hardly  all  his  hardships  and 
privations  could  warp  at  all.  And  I  permit  them  to 
myself  the  more  readily  since  I  may,  without  much 
immodesty,  consider  myself  the  most  vocal  of  the 
clan  which  Mr.  Hunt  dimly  regarded  as  the  Opposi- 

245 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

tion  to  his  claim  to  be  regarded  as  the  founder  of 
Pre-Raphaelism.  But  I  think  I  never  did  advance 
— it  was  never  my  intention  to  advance — any  sugges- 
tion that  the  true  inwardness  of  Pre-Raphaelism, 
the  exact  rendering,  hair  for  hair  of  the  model;  the 
passionate  hunger  and  thirst  for  even  accidental  truth, 
the  real  caput  mortuum  of  Pre-Raphaelism,  was  ever 
expressed  by  any  one  else  than  by  the  meticulously 
earnest  painter  and  great  man,  whose  death  was 
telegraphed  from  the  dim  recesses  of  London  into  the 
chess-board  pattern  of  sunlit  Pre-Raphaelite  Hessian 
harvest  lands.  May  the  fields  to  which  he  has  gone 
prove  such  very  bright  places  where,  to  his  cour- 
ageous eyes,  his  truth  shall  be  very  vivid  and  prevail ! 

Madox  Brown  has  been  dead  for  twenty  years  now, 
or  getting  on  for  that.  I  would  not  say  that  the  happi- 
est days  of  my  life  were  those  that  I  spent  in  his  studio, 
for  I  have  spent  in  my  life  days  as  happy  since  then; 
but  I  will  say  that  Madox  Brown  was  the  finest  man 
I  ever  knew.  He  had  his  irascibilities,  his  fits  of 
passion  when,  tossing  his  white  head,  his  mane  of 
hair  would  fly  all  over  his  face,  and  when  he  would 
blaspheme  impressively  after  the  manner  of  our  great- 
grandfathers. And  in  these  fits  of  temper  he  would 
frequently  say  the  most  unjust  things.  But  I  think 
that  he  was  never  either  unjust  or  ungenerous  in  cold 
blood,  and  I  am  quite  sure  that  envy  had  no  part 
at  all  in  his  nature.  Like  Rossetti  and  like  William 

246 


DEATHS    AND    DEPARTURES 

Morris,  in  his  very  rages  he  was  nearest  to  generosities. 
He  would  rage  over  an  injustice  to  some  one  else  to 
the  point  of  being  bitterly  unjust  to  the  oppressor. 
I  do  not  think  that  I  would  care  to  live  my  life  over 
again — I  have  had  days  that  I  would  not  again  face 
for  a  good  deal — but  I  would  give  very  much  of  what 
I  possess  to  be  able,  having  still  such  causes  for  satis- 
faction as  I  now  have  in  life,  to  be  able  to  live  once 
more  some  of  those  old  evenings  in  the  studio. 

The  lights  would  be  lit,  the  fire  would  glow  between 
the  red  tiles;  my  grandfather  would  sit  with  his 
glass  of  weak  whiskey  and  water  in  his  hand,  and 
would  talk  for  hours.  He  had  anecdotes  more  lavish 
and  more  picturesque  than  any  man  I  ever  knew. 
He  wrould  talk  of  Beau  Brummel,  who  had  been 
British  Consul  at  Calais  when  Madox  Brown  was 
born  there;  of  Paxton,  who  built  the  Crystal  Palace, 
and  of  the  mysterious  Duke  of  Portland,  who  lived 
underground,  but  who,  meeting  Madox  Brown  in 
Baker  Street  outside  Druces',  and  hearing  that 
Madox  Brown  suffered  from  gout,  presented  him 
with  a  large  quantity  of  colchicum  grown  at  Wei- 
beck.  .  .  . 

Well,  I  would  sit  there  on  the  other  side  of  the 
rustling  fire,  listening,  and  he  would  revive  the  splen- 
did ghosts  of  Pre-Raphaelites,  going  back  to  Cor- 
nelius and  Overbeck  and  to  Baron  Leys  and  Baron 
Wappers,  who  taught  him  first  to  paint  in  the  romantic, 
grand  manner.  He  would  talk  on.  Then  Mr.  William 

247 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

Rossetti  would  come  in  from  next  door  but  one,  and 
they  would  begin  to  talk  of  Shelley  and  Browning 
and  Mazzini  and  Napoleon  III.,  and  Mr.  Rossetti, 
sitting  in  front  of  the  fire,  would  sink  his  head  nearer 
and  nearer  to  the  flames.  His  right  leg  would  be 
crossed  over  his  left  knee,  and,  as  his  head  went  down, 
so,  of  necessity,  his  right  foot  would  come  up  and  out. 
It  would  approach  nearer  and  nearer  to  the  fire-irons 
which  stood  at  the  end  of  the  fender.  The  tranquil 
talk  would  continue.  Presently  the  foot  would  touch 
the  fire-irons  and  down  they  would  go  into  the  fender 
with  a  tremendous  clatter  of  iron.  Madox  Brown, 
half  dozing  in  the  firelight,  would  start  and  spill  some 
of  his  whiskey.  I  would  replace  the  fire-irons  in  their 
stand. 

The  talk  would  continue,  Mr.  Rossetti  beginning 
again  to  sink  his  head  toward  the  fire,  and  explaining 
that,  as  he  was  not  only  bald  but  an  Italian,  he  liked 
to  have  his  head  warmed.  Presently,  bang!  would  go 
the  fire-irons  again.  Madox  Brown  would  lose  some 
more  whiskey  and  would  exclaim: 

"Really,  William!" 

Mr.  Rossetti  would  say: 

"I  am  very  sorry,  Brown." 

I  would  replace  the  fire-irons  again,  and  the  talk 
would  continue.  And  then  for  the  third  time  the 
fire-irons  would  go  down.  Madox  Brown  would 
hastily  drink  what  little  whiskey  remained  to  him, 
and,  jumping  to  his  feet,  would  shout: 

248 


DEATHS    AND    DEPARTURES 

"God  damn  and  blast  you,  William!  can't  you  be 
more  careful  ?" 

To  which  his  son-in-law,  always  the  most  utterly 
calm  of  men,  would  reply: 

"Really,  Brown,  your  emotion  appears  to  be 
excessive.  If  Fordie  would  leave  the  fire-irons  lying 
in  the  fender  there  would  be  no  occasion  for  them  to 
fall." 

The  walls  were  covered  with  gilded  leather;  all 
the  doors  were  painted  dark  green;  the  room  was 
very  long,  and  partly  filled  by  the  great  picture  that 
was  never  to  be  finished,  and,  all  in  shadow,  in  the 
distant  corner  was  the  table  covered  with  bits  of 
string,  curtain-knobs,  horseshoes,  and  odds  and  ends 
of  iron  and  wood. 


XII 

HEROES    AND    SOME    HEROINES 

ABOUT  six  months  after  Madox  Brown's  death  I 
went  permanently  into  the  country,  where  I 
remained  for  thirteen  years,  thus  losing  almost  all 
touch  with  intellectual  or  artistic  life.  Yet,  one  very 
remarkable  pleasure  did  befall  me  during  the  early 
days  of  that  period  of  seclusion.  Mr.  Edward  Garnett, 
at  that  time  literary  adviser  to  the  most  enterprising 
publisher  of  that  day,  came  down  to  the  village, 
bringing  with  him  a  great  basket  of  manuscripts  that 
had  been  submitted  to  his  firm.  It  was  a  Sunday 
evening.  We  were  all  dressed  more  or  less  mediaevally, 
after  the  manner  of  true  disciples  of  socialism  of  the 
William  Morris  school.  We  were  drinking,  I  think, 
mead  out  of  cups  made  of  bullock's  horn.  Mr. 
Garnett  was  reading  his  MSS.  Suddenly  he  threw 
one  across  to  me. 

"Look  at  that,"  he  said. 

I  think  that  then  I  had  the  rarest  literary  pleasure 
of  my  existence.  It  was  to  come  into  contact  with  a 
spirit  of  romance,  of  adventure,  of  distant  lands, 
and  with  an  English  that  was  new,  magic,  and  unsur- 

250 


HEROES  AND  SOME  HEROINES 

passed.  It  sang  like  music;  it  overwhelmed  me  like 
a  great  warm  wave  of  the  sea,  and  it  was  as  clear 
as  tropical  sunlight  falling  into  deep  and  scented 
forests  of  the  East.  For  this  MS.  was  that  of  Al- 
mayer's  Folly,  the  first  book  of  Mr.  Joseph  Conrad, 
which  he  had  sent  up  for  judgment,  sailing  away 
himself,  as  I  believe,  for  the  last  time,  upon  a  ship 
going  toward  the  East.  So  was  Joseph  Conrad 
"discovered." 

But  that  was  the  day  of  discoveries.  It  was  an 
exciting,  a  wonderful  time.  In  those  years  Mr. 
Rudyard  Kipling  burst  upon  the  world  with  a  shower 
of  stars  like  those  of  a  certain  form  of  rocket.  Mr. 
Zangwill  was  "looming  large."  To-Day  was  a  won- 
derful periodical;  it  serialized  the  first  long  novel 
of  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells.  Mr.  Anthony  Hope  was  going 
immensely  strong.  Mr.  J.  M.  Barrie  was  beginning 
to  "boom."  Mr.  Crockett  was  also  "discovered," 
and  Mrs.  Craigie  and  the  authors  of  the  Pseudonym 
Library,  with  its  sulphur-yellow  covers  that  penetrated 
like  a  fumigation  into  every  corner  of  Europe.  Ma- 
demoiselle Ixe  must  have  found  millions  of  readers. 
And  it  was  really  the  talk  of  the  town.  Mr.  Gladstone, 
I  think,  wrote  a  postcard  about  it.  Then  there  was 
Olive  Schreiner,  who  was  a  prophetess,  and  who 
wrote  wonderfully  well  about  South  Africa,  and  lec- 
tured the  Almighty  for  the  benefit  of  Hampstead. 

The  tone  of  all  this  new  literature  was,  of  course, 
very  different  from  that  of  Pre-Raphaelism.  It  was 
17  251 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

in  many  ways  more  vivid,  more  actual,  and  more  of 
every  day,  just  as  it  was  certainly  less  refined  and  less 
precious.  And  I  must  confess  that  I  at  least  revelled 
in  this  new  note.  Being  very  young  and  properly 
humble,  all  these  appearances  filled  me  with  delight 
and  with  enthusiasm.  It  was  as  entrancing  to  me  to 
read  the  "Wheels  of  Chance"  in  the  badly  printed  col- 
umns of  To-Day  as  it  was  to  read  the  Dolly  Dialogues 
on  the  green  paper  of  the  Westminster  Gazette,  and  it 
was  only  a  more  wonderful  thing  to  be  able  to  read 
"  The  Nigger  of  the  Narcissus,"  which  was  the  last 
serial  to  appear  in  Henley's  National  Review.  I  was 
ready  to  accept  almost  anybody  and  anything,  though 
at  the  one  end  of  the  scale  I  could  not  swallow  Three 
Men  in  a  Boat,  or,  at  .the  other,  Dreams,  by  Olive 
Schreiner.  What  was  called  in  those  days  the  new 
humor  appeared  to  me  as  vulgar  as  the  works  of 
Albert  Smith  and  not  half  so  funny.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  new  seriousness  appeared  to  me  to  be  more 
funny  than  either,  particularly  when  Miss  Schreiner 
took  to  arguing  with  God.  I  remember  saying  as 
much  to  a  young  Hampstead  lady  who  came  near  to 
being  my  first — and  who  knows  whether  she  would 
not  have  been  my  only — love.  I  had  seen  her  home 
from  my  grandfather's,  and  we  walked  up  and  down 
before  her  garden  gate  discussing  this  work,  which 
struck  me  as  so  comic.  She  ended  by  saying  that  I 
was  as  vulgar  as  I  was  stupid.  So  there  that  romance 
came  to  an  end!  She  was  a  very  earnest  and  charm- 

252 


HEROES  AND  SOME  HEROINES 

ingly  ridiculous  person,  and  is  now  married  to  an 
eminent  stockbroker.  But  from  this  tender  reminis- 
cence I  gather  that  I  must  have  had  limits  in  my 
appreciations  of  the  bubbling  literature  of  that  day. 
But  the  limits  must  have  been  singularly  wide.  I 
suppose  those  works  really  took  me  out  of  the  rather 
stifling  atmosphere  of  Pre-Raphaelism,  just  as  in 
earlier  days  I  used  to  lock  myself  in  the  coal-cellar 
in  order  to  read  Dick  Harkaway  and  Sweeney  Todd, 
the  Demon  Barber,  and  other  penny-dreadfuls.  Then, 
I  was  reacting — and  I  am  sure  healthily — against 
being  trained  for  the  profession  of  a  genius. 

But  I  can  remember  with  what  enormous  enthu- 
siasm I  used  to  read  the  little  shilling,  paper-bound, 
bluish  books  which  contain  the  first  stories  of  Mr. 
Rudyard  Kipling.  Mr.  Kipling  himself  is  of  an 
origin  markedly  Pre-Raphaelite.  He  is  a  nephew 
of  Burne- Jones,  and  I  suppose  that  the  writings  of 
poor  "B.  V.  Thomson,"  the  very  Pre-Raphaelite 
author  of  The  City  of  Dreadful  Night — that  these 
works  more  profoundly  influenced  the  author  of 
The  Man  Who  Would  Be  King  than  any  other  pieces 
of  contemporary  literature.  I  do  not  know  whether 
I  knew  this  at  the  time,  but  I  can  very  well  remember 
coming  up  by  a  slow  train  from  Hythe  and  attempting 
at  one  and  the  same  time  to  read  the  volume  of  stories 
containing  "  Only  a  Subaltern  "  and  to  make  a  single 
pipe  of  shag  last  the  \vhole  of  that  long  journey. 
And  I  can  remember  that  when  I  came  at  almost 

253 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

the  same  moment  to  Charing  Cross  and  the  death 
of  the  subaltern  I  was  crying  so  hard  that  a  friendly 
ticket  collector  asked  me  if  I  was  very  ill,  and  saw 
me  into  a  cab. 

What,  then,  has  become  of  all  these  fine  enthu- 
siasms— for  assuredly  I  was  not  the  only  one  capable 
of  enthusiasms  ?  What  has  become  of  the  young  men 
with  the  long  necks  and  the  red  ties  ?  What  has  be- 
come of  all  the  young  maidens  with  the  round  shoul- 
ders, the  dresses  of  curtain  serge,  and  the  amber  neck- 
laces ?  Where  are  all  those  of  us  who  admired  Henley 
and  his  gang  ?  Where  are  all  the  adorers  of  the  Pre- 
Raphaelites  ?  Where  are  all  the  poets  of  the  Rhymer's 
Club  ?  Where  are  all  the  authors  of  To-Day ',  of  The 
Idler,  and  The  Outlook  in  its  brilliant  days  ?  Some- 
body— I  think  it  was  myself — made  a  couplet  running: 

"  Let  him   begone  !"  the  mighty  Wyndham  cried. 
And  Crosland  vanished  and  The  Outlook  died. 

One  had  such  an  enthusiasm  for  the  work  of  Mr. 
Crosland  in  those  days,  and  a  little  later. 

And  where  is  it  all  gone  ?  And  why  ?  I  do  not 
know — or  perhaps  I  do.  I  went,  as  I  say,  for  thirteen 
years  into  the  country.  I  lived  entirely,  or  almost 
entirely,  among  peasants.  This  was,  of  course,  due 
to  that  idealizing  of  the  country  life  which  was  so 
extraordinarily  prevalent  in  the  earlier  nineties  among 
the  disciples  of  William  Morris  and  other  Cockneys. 
It  was  a  singularly  unhealthy  frame  of  mind  which 

254 


HEROES  AND  SOME  HEROINES 

caused  a  number  of  young  men,  totally  unfitted  for  it, 
to  waste  only  too  many  good  years  of  their  lives  in 
posing  as  romantic  agriculturists.  They  took  small 
holdings,  lost  their  hay  crops,  saw  their  chickens  die, 
and  stuck  to  it  with  grim  obstinacy  until,  William 
Morris  and  Morrisism  being  alike  dead,  their  feelings 
found  no  more  support  from  the  contagion  of  other 
enthusiasms.  So  they  have  mostly  returned  to  useful 
work,  handicapped  by  the  loss  of  so  many  good  years, 
and  generally  with  ruined  digestions;  for  the  country, 
with  its  atrocious  food  and  cooking,  is,  in  England, 
the  home  of  dyspepsia. 

I  suppose  that  is  why  England  is  known  abroad 
as  das  Pillenland — le  pays  des  pilules — the  land  of 
patent  medicines. 

So  that,  although  I  must  write  it  down — atque  ego 
in  Arcadia  vtxt — I  am  able  to  see,  having  returned 
after  this  interval  to  a  city  where  the  things  of  the 
spirit  have  as  much  place  as  can  be  found  in  the 
country  of  "  price  per  thou"-—  I  am  able,  as  the  French 
would  say,  to  constater  how  enormous  a  change  has 
come  over  the  face  of  the  only  city  in  the  world 
where,  in  spite  of  everything,  life  is  worth  living. 
For,  after  all,  London  is  the  only  place  in  the  world 
where  there  is  real  freedom  and  real  solitude,  where 
no  man's  eye  is  upon  you,  since  no  man  cares  twopence 
what  you  are,  where  you  may  be  going,  or  what  will 
become  of  you.  And  there  we  have  it,  the  reason  why 
London  is  so  good  a  place  for  mankind,  and  a  place 

255 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

so  bitter  bad  at  once  for  the  arts  and  ideas.  Rushing 
about  as  we  do  in  huge  crowds,  we  have  no  time  for 
any  solidarity;  faced  as  we  are  by  an  incredible 
competition,  we  have  no  heart  in  us  for  self-sacrifice, 
and  at  it  as  we  are  all  day  and  half  the  night  we  have 
no  time  for  reflection.  Yet  it  is  only  of  reflection 
that  ideas  are  born,  and  it  is  only  by  self-sacrifice 
and  by  self-sacrifice  again  that  the  arts  can  flourish. 
We  must  write  much  and  sacrifice  much  of  what  we 
have  written;  we  must  burn  whole  volumes;  deferring 
to  the  ideas  of  our  brother  artists  whom  we  trust, 
we  must  sacrifice  other  whole  volumes,  to  achieve  such 
a  little  piece  of  perfection  that,  if  that  too  were  burned, 
the  ashes  of  it  would  not  fill  a  doll's  thimble.  Yet 
before  us  hangs  always  now  the  scroll  with  the  fateful 
words,  "price  per  thou." 

The  mention  of  this  wonderful  contrivance  will 
extort  from  a  French  or  a  German  writer  a  look  of 
utter  incredulity.  They  will  think  that  you  are 
"pulling  their  legs."  And  then  gradually  you  will 
observe  to  be  passing  into  their  faces  an  expression 
of  extremely  polite,  of  slightly  ironical,  admiration: 

"Ah,  yes,"  they  will  say,  "you  English  are  so 
practical." 

And  indeed  we  are  very  practical.  But  it  is  only 
on  the  material  side  that  we  even  begin  to  consider 
ways  and  means.  Thus,  lately  we  had  an  enlighten- 
ing and  lively  discussion  as  to  the  length  a  "book" 
should  have.  (By  "book"  a  six-shilling  novel  should, 

256 


HEROES  AND  SOME  HEROINES 

I  suppose,  be  understood.)  We  were  instructed  that 
the  public  desires,  nay,  insists  on,  a  certain  fixed 
amount  of  reading  matter.  You  might  weigh  a  book 
in  scales,  you  might  measure  its  lines  of  bourgeois  or 
pica  type  with  a  foot-rule.  But  your  book  must  be 
able  to  be  assayed  either  by  weight  or  by  measure. 
Indeed,  nowadays  your  publisher,  when  he  com- 
missions a  novel,  insists  in  his  agreement  that  it  shall 
be  seventy-five  thousand  words  in  length.  Just 
imagine!  You  might  want  to  write  the  chronicle  of 
a  family,  as  Thackeray  did  in  The  Newcomes,  and 
you  must  do  it  all  in  75,000  words.  Or  you  might 
want  to  write  the  story  of  how  a  young  man  got  engaged 
to  a  young  woman  during  five  accidental  meetings  in 
omnibuses.  And,  if  you  cannot  do  it  in  4,000  words, 
so  as  to  make  it  a  "short  story"  for  one  of  the  popular 
magazines,  you  must  extend  it  to  75,000  or  there  will 
be,  every  publisher  will  tell  you,  "no  market  for  it." 
In  the  earlier  nineties  the  publisher  cheated  his 
authors  as  a  rule  tyrannically  enough,  and,  since  no 
author  ever  looked  at  an  agreement  in  those  days, 
things  went  smoothly.  The  publisher,  on  the  other 
hand,  considered  sometimes  the  quality  of  the  work 
that  he  published,  and  seldom  thought  about  the 
length  of  the  book.  Indeed,  everything  was  then 
made  more  easy  for  the  author's  activities.  When  I 
published,  at  the  age  of  eighteen,  my  first  novel,  it 
was  borne  in  upon  me  that  there  was  no  need  to  be 
acquainted  with  the  mysteries  of  grammar — or,  rather, 

257 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

of  syntax,  since  in  England  there  is  no  such  thing  as 
grammar — of  syntax,  of  spelling,  or  of  punctuation. 
The  author  of  that  day  could  write  exactly  as  he 
pleased;  he  could  make  mistakes  as  to  dates;  he 
could  rechristen  his  heroine  by  inadvertance  four 
times  in  as  many  chapters.  But  he  knew  that  he 
would  have  three  succeeding  sets  of  proofs  and  revises, 
and  that  each  proof  and  each  revise  would  be  gone 
through  with  an  almost  incredible  care  by  a  proof- 
reader who  would  be  a  man  of  the  highest  education 
and  of  a  knowledge  almost  encyclopaedic.  I  once  by 
a  slip  of  the  pen  wrote  the  name  of  the  painter  of  the 
"Primavera,"  Buonarotti.  Sure  enough  the  proof 
came  back  marked  in  the  margin:  "Surely  there  is 
no  picture  of  this  name  by  Michael  Angelo.  Query 
Botticelli  ?"  So  that,  indeed,  in  the  nineties,  and 
before  that,  one  had  a  sense  not  only  of  dignity  and 
luxury,  but  of  security.  And  this  was  very  good 
for  writing. 

Consider  where  we  are  now!  In  the  case  of  the  last 
novel  but  one  that  I  published  I  received  from  the 
publisher  the  most  singular  and  the  most  insolent 
document  that  I  think  an  author  could  possibly 
receive.  This  requested  me  to  mark  with  red  ink 
any  printer's  error  and  with  black  my  own  changes 
in  the  text.  Just  think  of  what  this  means!  An 
author,  when  he  is  correcting  his  proofs,  if  he  is  any- 
where near  worth  his  salt,  is  in  a  state  of  the  most 
extreme  tension.  It  is  his  last  chance  for  getting  his 

258 


HEROES  AND  SOME  HEROINES 

phrases  musical  or  his  words  exactly  right;  it  is  an 
operation  usually  more  trying  than  the  actual  writing 
of  a  book.  And  into  this  intense  abstraction  there  is, 
as  it  were,  to  come  the  voice  of  a  damned  publisher 
exclaiming:  "Red  ink;  if  you  please;  that  hyphen  is 
a  printer's  error."  Nowadays,  indeed,  the  publisher 
only  allows  his  author  one  proof  and  no  revises  unless 
the  author  makes  a  horrible  row  about  it.  And  the 
publisher's  proofreader  seems  to  have  disappeared 
altogether.  Last  March  I  received  three  sets  of  proofs 
—forty-eight  pages — in  which  the  printer  had  uni- 
formly spelled  the  word  receive  wrong.  Now  I  know 
how  to  spell  receive,  and  so  does  my  typist.  Yet  it 
is  a  matter  as  to  which  one  always  has  a  lingering 
doubt.  So  that  when  nine  times  in  forty-eight  pages 
I  found  the  "i"  preceding  the  "e"  I  was  frightened 
and  turned  to  a  dictionary.  But  do  you  imagine 
that  the  "reader  for  the  press"  had  once  noticed  this  ? 
Not  a  bit  of  it.  The  whole  forty-eight  pages  were 
guiltless  of  a  speck  from  his  pen,  and  after  that  I 
had  my  nerves  perpetually  on  the  stretch  to  find  out 
and  to  examine  all  words  like  believe  or  deceive. 
My  mind  was  in  a  woful  state  of  jangle  and  exaspera- 
tion, and  the  one  critic  who  appeared  to  carefully 
have  read  the  book  remarked  that  I  had  split  an  in- 
finitive. It  is  not  that  this  particular  thing  so  par- 
ticularly matters;  it  is  that  the  whole  spirit  is  so 
atrocious  and  so  depressing.  The  half-ruined  libraries, 
we  are  told,  badger  the  unfortunate  publisher;  the 

259 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

unfortunate  publisher  has  beaten  down  the  unfor- 
tunate printer  until,  I  am  told,  the  printing  schedule 
of  to-day  is  only  fifty-five  per  cent,  of  what  it  was  in 
1890.  As  a  consequence  the  printer  will  only  send 
one  set  of  proofs  and  no  revises.  He  sacks  afiy  proof- 
reader whose  competence  commands  a  decent  wage, 
so  that  all  the  really  efficient  "readers  for  the  press" 
are  said  to  be  employed  by  the  newspapers. 

And  along  with  all  this  there  has  gone  the  tremen- 
dous increase  in  the  cost  of  living  and  the  enormous 
increase  of  the  public  indifference  to  anything  in  the 
nature  of  the  arts.  This  last — and  possibly  both  of 
these  factors — began  with  the  firing  of  the  first  shot 
in  the  Boer  War.  That  was  the  end  of  everything— 
of  the  Pre-Raphaelites,  of  the  Henley  gang,  of  the 
New  Humor,  of  the  Victorian  Great  Figure,  and  of 
the  last  traces  of  the  mediaeval  superstition  that  man 
might  save  his  soul  by  the  reading  of  good  books. 

Africa  has  been  called  the  grave  of  reputations. 
South  Africa  has  bitterly  revenged  itself  upon  us  for 
our  crimes.  It  was  undoubtedly  the  Rand  millionaire 
who  began  to  set  the  pace  of  social  life  so  immensely 
fast.  And  the  South  African  War  meant  the  final 
installation  of  the  Rand  millionaire  in  Mayfair,  which 
is  the  centre  of  English — and  possibly  of  European 
and  American — social  life.  The  Rand  millionaire 
was  almost  invariably  a  Jew;  and  whatever  may  be 
said  for  or  against  the  Jew  as  a  gainer  of  money, 
there  is  no  doubt  that,  having  got  it,  he  spends  it 

260 


HEROES  AND  SOME  HEROINES 

with  an  extraordinary  lavishness,  so  that  the  whole 
tone  of  English  society  really  changed  at  about  this 
time.  No  doubt  the  coming  of  the  motor-car,  of  the 
telephone,  of  the  thousand  and  one  pleasant  little  inven- 
tions of  which  no  one  had  any  idea  in  the  nineteenth 
century — no  doubt  the  coming  of  all  these  little  things 
that  have  rendered  life  so  gay,  so  sensuous,  and  so 
evanescent — all  these  little  things  have  played  their 
part  in  adding  immensely  to  the  cost  of  life  if  one  has 
to  live  at  all  as  pleasantly  as  one's  neighbors.  But 
they  are  the  accident;  it  is  the  people  who  set  the 
measure  of  the  amount  to  which  these  luxuries  are  to 
be  indulged  in;  it  is  those  people  who,  in  essence, 
rule  our  lives. 

It  is  all  very  well  to  say  that  luxury — which  is  the 
culture  of  life — is  neither  here  nor  there  in  the  world 
of  the  arts  or  the  ideas.  My  German  great-grand- 
mother, the  wife  of  the  Biirgermeister  of  one  of  the 
capital  cities  of  Germany,  could  never  get  over  what 
appeared  to  her  a  disastrous  new  habit  that  was  begin- 
ning to  be  adopted  in  Germany  toward  the  end  of  her 
life,  about  1780.  She  said  that  it  was  sinful,  that  it 
was  extravagant,  that  it  would  lead  to  the  downfall  of 

O  7 

the  German  nation.  This  revolutionary  new  habit 
was  none  other  than  that  of  having  a  dining-room. 
In  those  days  Germany  was  so  poor  a  country  that 
even  though  my  great-grandparents  were  considered 
wealthy  people  they  were  always  accustomed  to 
eat  their  meals  in  the  bedroom.  There  was,  that  is 

261 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

to  say,  only  one  room  and  a  kitchen  in  their  house. 
The  beds  of  the  whole  family  were  in  niches  in  the 
walls  surrounding  the  living-room,  and  it  was  here 
that  they  ate,  slept,  changed  their  clothes,  or  received 
their  guests.  The  families  of  merchants  less  wealthy 
even  cooked  in  their  bedrooms.  This  appeared  to 
my  great-grandmother  the  only  virtuous  arrange- 
ment. And  it  was  no  doubt  in  the  same  spirit  that 
Madox  Brown  considered  it  a  proof  of  decadent 
luxury  to  wash  one's  hands  more  than  three  times  a 
day.  Nowadays,  I  suppose,  we  should  consider 
my  great-grandmother's  virtue  a  disgusting  affair, 
and  one  that,  because  it  was  insanitary,  was  also 
immoral,  or  at  least  anti-social;  while  my  grand- 
father, who  washed  his  hands  only  three  times  a  day 
— before  breakfast,  lunch,  and  dinner — would  be 
considered  as  only  just  scraping  through  the  limits 
of  cleanliness.  Yet  the  price  of  soap  is  increasing 
daily. 

It  may  well  be  said:  Why  could  my  German 
grandfather  when  he  married  not  have  gone  on 
eating  his  meals  in  his  bedroom  after  the  patriarchal 
manner  ?  But  to  say  so  would  argue  a  serious  want 
of  knowledge  of  the  creature  that  man  is.  He  would 
have  been  intolerably  miserable;  his  wife  would 
have  been  intolerably  miserable;  his  children  would 
have  been  miserable  and  crestfallen  among  their 
playmates,  for  by  that  time — say  a  hundred  years 
ago — all  the  neighbors  had  dining-rooms.  So  that 

262 


HEROES  AND  SOME  HEROINES 

the  problem  before  my  grandfather  was  to  set  his 
printing  presses  to  work  with  redoubled  speed  and  so 
to  earn  money  enough  to  build  for  his  wife  and  his 
children  a  sufficiently  large  house.  And  so  he  did, 
so  that  when  he  died  he  had  not  only  bought  the 
very  large  town  house  of  a  Westphalian  nobleman, 
but  he  was  able  to  leave  to  each  of  his  fourteen  chil- 
dren the  sum  of  £3,750 — which,  taken  in  the  aggregate, 
represented  a  very  large  fortune  for  a  German  of  the 
forties.  But,  then,  four  hundred  a  year  in  the  eighties 
was  considered  sufficient  for  a  man  to  marry  on  in 
London.  It  is  not  enough  for  a  bachelor  nowadays, 
if  he  is  to  live  with  any  enjoyment. 

And  the  artist  must  live  with  enjoyment  if  his 
work  is  to  be  sound  and  good.  He  ought,  if  he  is 
to  know  life,  to  be  able  to  knock  at  all  doors;  he 
ought  to  be  able  to  squander  freely  upon  occasion; 
he  ought  to  be  able  to  riot  now  and  then.  It  is  no 
good  saying  that  he  ought  to  be  able  to  live  with  his 
muse,  as  with  his  love,  in  a  cottage.  L'un  et  Vautre 
se  disenty  but  though  it  is  very  well  to  live  with  love 
in  a  cottage  in  your  young  years  when  the  world  is  a 
funny  place,  and  the  washing-up  of  dishes  such  a 
humorous  incident  as  makes  of  life  a  picnic,  the 
writer  who  passes  his  life  at  this  game  will  be  in  the 
end  but  a  poor  creature,  whether  as  a  man  or  a 
writer.  Or,  no,  he  may  make  a  very  fine  man  of  the 
type  of  little  St.  Francis  of  the  Birds.  But  he  will 
be  a  writer  purely  doctrinaire.  And  for  a  writer  to 

263 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

be  doctrinaire  is  the  end  of  him  as  an  artist.     He 
may  make  an  excellent  pamphleteer. 

This  is  very  much  what  has  happened  to  English 
literary  life.  The  English  writer  appears  to  me— 
in  the  pack,  for  obviously  there  are  the  exceptions, 
mostly  of  an  old-fashioned  order — in  the  pack  like 
a  herd  of  hungry  wolves.  Yet,  unlike  the  wolf,  he 
is  incapable  of  herding  to  any  sensible  purpose. 
The  goodness  of  the  Pre-Raphaelite  movement  was 
its  union  in  a  common  devotion  to  the  arts.  Its 
actual  achievements  may  have  been  very  small.  I 
should  not  like  if  I  were  put  upon  my  critical  judg- 
ment to  say  that  either  Rossetti  or  Holman  Hunt, 
either  Swinburne  or  William  Morris,  Millais  or  Burne- 
Jones,  or,  for  the  matter  of  that,  my  grandfather, 
were  first-rate  artists.  But  their  effect  in  heighten- 
ing the  prestige  and  the  glamour  of  the  arts  was  very 
wonderful,  and  remains,  for  the  Continent,  if  not 
for  England,  a  wonderful  thing  too.  Similarly  with 
Henley's  crowd  of  friends.  Their  union  was  very 
close,  though  not  so  close  as  that  of  the  Pre-Raphaelite 
circle.  Their  devotion  to  a  sort  of  practical  art  was 
very  great  too,  though  it  was  not  so  conscious  as  that 
of  Flaubert  and  his  ring.  Henley,  at  least  sub- 
consciously, taught  his  followers  that  the  first  business 
of  art  is  to  interest,  and  the  second,  to  interest,  and 
the  third,  again — to  interest.  And  I  think  that  nearly 
all  that  is  vital,  actual,  and  alive  in  English  work  of 
to-day  is  due  to  the  influence  of  Henley  and  his  friends, 

264 


HEROES  AND  SOME  HEROINES 

just  as  I  am  perfectly  certain  that  the  two  first-class 
purely  imaginative  writers  of  England  of  to-day — 
Mr.  Henry  James  and  Mr.  Joseph  Conrad — are  the 
direct  products  artistically  of  Turgeniev  and  of 
Flaubert.  It  is  mortifying  to  have  to  consider  that 
each  of  these  great  writers  is  a  foreigner.  But  so  it  is, 
and  I  should  rather  imagine  that  neither  of  these 
distinguished  foreigners  has  ever  heard  the  phrase 
that  I  have  in  this  place  so  often  used. 

And  great  though  Pre-Raphaelism  was  as  an  in- 
fluence, great  though  Henleyism  is  as  an  influence, 
yet  each  of  these  influences  left  behind  it  a  curse  that 
has  miasmatically  affected  the  English  world  of 
letters. 

I  remember — years  ago  before  I  went  into  the 
country — sitting  in  one  of  those  distressingly  un- 
pleasant French  restaurants  of  Soho  that  even  in 
those  days  these  superior  and  Morris-influenced 
writers  considered  as  being  at  once  romantic  and 
satisfactory — I  remember  sitting  listening  to  a  group 
of  my  fellow-socialists  of  that  type.  I  was  always 
frightened  of  my  companions,  they  were  so  bitterly 
contemptuous  of  me  if  I  failed  to  know  exactly  what 
was  the  proper  doctrine  about  any  point  of  the  Ideal 
Commonwealth,  or  as  to  what  sort  of  clothes  Dante 
wore  at  Ravenna.  Yes,  I  was  frightened;  and  sud- 
denly it  came  into  my  head  to  understand  that  a 
temporal  tyranny  might  be  a  bad  thing,  but  that  the 
intellectual  tyranny  that  my  young  friends  would  set 

265 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

up,  when  their  social  revolution  came  round  the  corner 
like  the  three-horse  omnibus — that  this  intellectual 
tyranny  would  be  infinitely  worse  than  anything  that 
Ivan  the  Terrible  could  ever  have  devised.  For  these 
young  men,  my  companions,  would  keep  all  the  good 
things  of  life  for  those  who  understood  what  would 
happen  to  babies  in  the  Ideal  State,  for  those  who 
knew  what  Beatrice  ate  on  the  morning  before  she 
met  Dante  for  the  first  time,  for  those  who  had  the 
"Cuchullain  Saga,"  the  "Saga  of  Grettir  the  Strong," 
and  possibly  "Ossian"  and  "News  from  Nowhere" 
by  heart.  As  for  me,  I  never  could  understand  any- 
thing at  all  about  the  economic  conditions  of  the 
Ideal  State.  Most  of  the  Celtic  and  Scandinavian 
epics  appeared  to  me  to  be  intolerably  long  and 
amateurish  productions  of  dull  peasants  who  occa- 
sionally produced  passages  of  brilliancy  accidentally 
surpassing  anything  that  was  ever  written  or  ever 
will  be.  And,  as  for  "News  from  Nowhere"  .  .  . 
So,  looking  at  my  contemptuous  young  companions, 
each  with  his  soft  frieze  coat,  the  pockets  of  which 
suggested  that  they  contained  many  apples;  each 
with  his  low  collar,  each  with  his  red  tie,  and  looking 
at  the  dirty  table-cloths,  the  cheap  knives,  the  cheap 
and  poisonous  claret,  I  felt  suddenly  guilt,  humility, 
and  intense  dread;  I  felt  that  I  was  a  Philistine!  I 
felt  that  every  moment  that  I  sat  there  I  might  be 
found  out  and  conveyed  swiftly  to  the  chilling  dun- 
geons of  the  Ideal  State.  I  seemed  to  hear  from 

266 


HEROES  AND  SOME  HEROINES 

round  the  corner  the  rattle  of  the  three-horse  'bus. 
I  seemed  to  catch  in  the  eyes  around  that  table  a 
threatening  gleam  as  if  they  suspected  that  I  was  a 
sort  of  spy  at  that  banquet  of  conspirators. 

I  fled — into  the  country.  Looking  at  the  matter 
now,  I  perceive  that  Henley  was  responsible  for  this — 
Henley  and  his  piratical  gang.  These  people  had 
struck  me  as  rough  and  unduly  boisterous  when  I 
went  to  them  out  of  a  Pre-Raphaelite  household. 
But,  my  grandfather  being  dead,  I  suddenly  reacted. 
I  did  not  know  then,  but  I  know  now,  that  my  brain 
was  singing  to  me: 

"Under  the   bright  and  starry  sky 
Dig  my  grave  and  let  me  lie." 

Only  I  wanted  to  have  some  tussles  with  the  "good 
brown  earth"  before  that  hilltop  should  receive  me. 
Well,  we  have  most  of  us  found  the  "good  brown 
earth"  part  of  a  silly  pose — but  I  am  not  sorry.  It 
was  Henley  and  his  friends  who  introduced  into  the 
English  writing  mind  the  idea  that  a  man  of  action 
was  something  fine  and  a  man  of  letters  a  sort  of 
castrato.  They  went  jumping  all  over  the  earth, 
they  "jumped  the  blind  baggage"  in  the  United  States, 
they  played  at  being  tramps  in  Turkey,  they  died  in 
Samoa,  they  debauched  the  morals  of  lonely  border 
villages.  You  see  what  it  was — they  desired  to  be 
men  of  action,  and  certainly  they  infected  me  with 
the  desire,  and  I  am  very  glad  of  it,  just  as  I  am 
18  267 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

very  glad  that  the  intolerable  boredom  of  a  country 
life  without  sport  or  pursuit  taught  me  better  in  time. 
With  the  idea  that  a  writer  should  have  been  a 
man  of  action  before  he  begins  to  write  I  am  cordially 
in  agreement;  indeed,  I  doubt  whether  any  writer 
has  ever  been  thoroughly  satisfactory  unless  he  has 
once  had  some  sort  of  normal  existence.  No  greater 
calamity  could  befall  one  than  to  be  trained  as  a  genius. 
For  the  writer  looks  at  life  and  does  not  share  it. 
This  is  his  calamity;  this  is  his  curse.  If  Shakespeare 
had  not  held  horses  outside  a  theatre  or  taken  an 
interest  in  commercial  enterprises,  or  whatever  it 
was  of  a  normal  sort  that  he  did  before  he  wrote  his 
first  play,  I  think  it  is  certain  that  the  Baconians 
would  not  to-day  be  troubling  their  heads  about  him. 
He  would  have  remained  a  poet  of  about  the  calibre 
of  Fletcher,  who  was  a  very  beautiful  and  poetical 
soul.  Shakespeare  had  a  soul  not  a  bit  more  poetic, 
but  he  was  of  his  world  and  he  knew  life.  Hence  he 
had  not  only  the  gifts  of  a  poet,  but  the  knowledge 
of  how  to  invent  along  the  lines  of  probability,  and 
the  one  faculty  is  as  essential  to  the  perfect  work  of 
art  as  is  the  other.  And  Shakespeare  had  the  im- 
mense advantage  of  belonging  to  a  circle — to  a  circle 
that  praised  art  high,  that  troubled  its  head  about  the 
technical  side  of  things,  and  a  circle  that  troubled 
itself  very  little  about  its  social  position.  Shakes- 
peare— or  whoever  it  was  —  wrote  the  ballad  be- 
ginning: 

268 


HEROES  AND  SOME  HEROINES 

"It  was  a  lording's   daughter, 
The  fairest  one  of  three," 

in  which  a  learned  man  and  a  soldier  contend  for  the 
favor  of  an  earl's  daughter.  They  put  up  a  fairly 
equal  fight  of  it,  so  that  for  the  moment  I  do  not 
remember  which  got  the  upper  hand.  But  do  you 
imagine  that  an  English  writer  of  to-day  would  give 
a  man  of  letters  a  show  if  he  had  to  picture  him  as  the 
rival  of  an  officer  in  the  Guards,  or,  on  the  other  hand, 
as  the  rival  of  a  colonial  pioneer  ?  Not  a  bit  of  it! 
The  modern  English  writer — and  he  would  not  be 
of  necessity  a  traitor  to  his  cloth — would  argue  in 
this  way:  A  writer  has  in  England  no  social  position; 
an  officer  in  the  Guards  is  at  the  top  of  the  tree. 
Therefore  the  heroine  would  take  the  officer  in  the 
Guards.  Or,  again,  he  would  say  a  man  of  letters  is 
regarded  as  something  less  than  a  man,  whereas  any 
sort  of  individual  returning  from  the  colonies  is  re- 
garded inevitably  as  something  rather  more  than  two 
supermen  rolled  into  one.  So  that  the  heroine  would 
inevitably  take  the  returned  colonist. 

No,  this  writer  would  not  be  a  traitor  to  his  cloth. 
It  does  not  matter  that  officers  in  the  Guards  are 
mostly  rather  silly  fools,  without  conversation  or  any 
interests  beyond  the  head  of  their  polo  mallets,  or 
that  nearly  every  returned  colonial  can  do  nothing 
better  than  talk  of  the  affairs  of  his  dull  colony  in  the 
language  at  once  of  a  bore  and  a  prig — for  of  necessity 

269 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

his  mind  is  occupied  with  a  civilization  of  a  low  kind. 
But  still  the  poor  depressed  writer  will  see  that  the 
heroine — being  a  bright  and  beautiful  English  girl- 
will  prefer  money  or  social  position  to  any  of  the 
delights  of  communing  with  giants  of  the  intellect. 
And  to  marry  a  lieutenant  in  the  Guards  is  to  have 
duchesses  on  your  visiting  list  or  to  go  yearly  to  Ascot 
in  the  smartest  of  frocks,  though  there  may  be  some 
difficulty  in  meeting  the  bills  sent  in  by  Madame 
Somebody.  Or,  again,  to  marry  a  colonial  adminis- 
trator or  one  of  those  rather  sketchy  gentlemen  from 
Australia  who  are  always  lecturing  us  as  if  they  were 
so  many  Roosevelts  by  the  grace  of  God — to  marry 
some  such  gentleman  is  in  all  probability  to  become 
at  least  the  wife  of  a  K.C.M.G.,  possibly  of  a  peer, 
to  have  eventually  a  palace  in  Park  Lane  and  the 
country  estate  of  an  impoverished  earl. 

So  the  writer  of  fiction  would  estimate  the  chances, 
and  I  do  not  know  whether  he  would  be  right  or 
wrong;  for  certainly  the  ordinary  man  of  letters  has 
precious  little  to  offer  anybody,  and  none  too  much  for 
himself.  Poor  devil,  he  is  between  the  necessity 
for  an  expenditure  that  would  have  seemed  vast  to 
his  grandfather  and  a  buying  public  that  day  by  day 
shows  less  desire  to  buy  books.  For  this  too  the 
South  African  War  was  partly  responsible.  I  had  a 
young  connection  who  lately  went  up  for  the  pre- 
liminary examination  at  the  Admiralty.  Said  the 
examining  admiral: 

270 


HEROES  AND  SOME  HEROINES 

"Now,  my  man,  what  papers  does  your  father  read  ? 
And  what  do  you  judge  from  that  that  his  politics 
are  ?" 

This  was  not  an  invidious  political  question  on  the 
admiral's  part;  the  object  of  the  examination  is  to  test 
a  boy's  powers  of  observation.  The  boy's  answer  was: 

"Oh,  my  governor's  a  Tory.  He  reads  the  Daily 
Chronicle,  the  Daily  News,  the  Westminster  Gazette, 
the  Manchester  Guardian.  .  .  ." 

"But,"  said  the  admiral,  aghast,  "those  are  all 
Liberal  papers.  You  said  your  father  was  a  Tory." 

"Oh  yes,"  the  boy  answered  with  assurance,  "he 
takes  in  the  Times,  the  Saturday  Review,  the  Spec- 
tator, and  the  Field,  to  give  his  side  a  show — to  put  the 
money  into  their  pockets.  But  he  never  reads  any 
of  them  except  now  and  then,  and  the  Field  always 
on  Sunday.  He  says  he  can  do  all  the  lying  that  is 
wanted  on  his  side  for  himself,  without  reading  the 
Tory  papers.  But  he  wants  to  know  what  lies  the 
other  side  are  telling,  because  he  can't  make  them 
up  for  himself." 

The  admiral  laughed  and  passed  the  boy,  but  the 
admiral  was  old-fashioned.  He  had  a  pre-Boer-War 
habit  of  mind  as  regarded  the  newspapers.  In  his 
prime  he  took  the  Times  or  the  Morning  Post,  and 
that  was  all  he  had  in  the  way  of  a  paper.  But  with 
the  coming  of  the  South  African  War  we  acquired 
the  habit  of  skimming  through  from  seven  to  ten 
papers  a  day — to  get  a  little  hope.  I  don't  blame 

271 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

us.  The  man  who  could  get  through  the  period  of 
Spion  Kop  without  rushing  anywhere  to  read  the 
latest  bulletin,  or  could  keep  in  his  pocket  one  single 
penny  that  might  give  him  some  glimmer  of  hopeful 
news,  was  something  less  than  a  man.  I  suppose  I 
was  as  hot  a  pro-Boer  as  any  one  well  could  be,  but 
I  know  I  came  very  near  to  crying  with  joy  when 
Mafeking  was  relieved.  I  remember  that  that  night  I 
had  been  up  to  Highgate.  I  was  coming  back  very 
late  and  I  asked  the  tram-driver  if  there  was  any  news. 
He  said  there  was  none.  Suddenly  the  conductor 
came  running  out  of  the  fire-station,  shouting: 

"The  relief-party  is  in!'* 

Immediately  he  scrambled  on  board  the  tram,  the 
driver  whipped  his  horses  to  a  gallop,  and  we  went 
tearing  madly  down  that  long  hill  into  the  darkness, 
the  conductor  standing  on  top  of  the  tram  and  shout- 
ing at  the  top  of  his  voice  that  Mafeking  was  relieved. 
And,  in  those  black  and  grim  streets,  shining  with 
the  wet,  suddenly  every  window  lit  up  and  opened, 
and  from  each  there  came  out  a  Union  Jack.  It  was 
as  if  we  entered  a  city  given  over  to  night,  to  the 
tears  of  the  rain,  to  merciless  suspension,  and  as  if  we 
left  behind  us  streets  gay,  triumphant,  illuminated, 
imperial.  Or  perhaps  imperial  is  not  the  word.  I 
don't  know. 

Farther  down  in  the  town  we  came  upon  places 
where  the  news  was  already.  I  went  toward  St. 
Paul's  to  see  if  there  was  not  some  sort  of  inspiring 

272 


HEROES  AND  SOME  HEROINES 

demonstration.  But  in  Holborn  I  was  knocked  down. 
A  fat  and  elderly  gentleman,  bearing  over  his  shoulder 
a  long  pole  on  which  were  nailed  about  twenty  little 
flags,  turned  suddenly  round  and  the  end  of  the  pole 
caught  me  under  the  ear. 

Imperial  ?  No,  I  think  not.  We  were  more  like 
a  nation  of  convicted  murderers,  suddenly  reprieved 
when  the  hangman's  cap  was  over  our  eyes.  I  think 
I  was  as  glad  as  any  one  else.  But  the  Nemesis  re- 
mains. Still,  every  day  I  read  my  five  newspapers. 
And,  in  common  with  the  rest  of  England,  I  don't 
believe  a  single  word  that  I  read  in  any  one  of  them. 
Like  the  father  of  the  boy  who  was  up  for  examination, 
I  prefer  to  read  papers  of  the  shade  of  politics  that  for 
the  moment  may  happen  to  be  not  my  own.  I  can 
lie  so  much  more  skilfully  than  any  journalist  upon 
my  own  side. 

But  this  enormous  and  unimpressed  reading  of 
newspapers  has  given  the  last  kick  to  the  writer  of 
books.  It  is  the  end  of  him.  He  has  gone  out.  Before 
the  war  a  rich  man  occasionally  bought  a  book. 
The  other  day  I  owned  a  periodical.  Said  a  man  to 
me — he  owned  seven  motor-cars: 

"I  wish  your  paper  did  not  cost  half-a-crown.  If 
it  was  only  a  shilling  I  would  certainly  buy  it.  But 
times  are  so  hard  that  I  have  to  put  down  my  book 
bill."  "And  he  had  great  possessions." 

Before  the  war  this  gentleman  would  have  been 
forced,  by  sheer  hypocrisy,  to  pay  that  particular 

273 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

cock  to  jEsculapius.  But  the  war  gave  us  our  excuse 
for  "putting  down"  anything — book  bills  coming, 
of  course,  first  —  and  since  the  war  my  friend  has 
had  to  keep  it  up  against  a  Rand  magnate  of  his 
immediate  circle.  At  that  moment  this  other  gentle- 
man owned  six  motor-cars.  My  friend  had  therefore 
to  have  his  seven.  I  believe  he  was  the  second  richest 
man  in  England. 

I  cannot,  however,  say  that  the  poor  come  any 
better  out  of  that  particular  struggle.  Thus  at  about 
the  same  time  I  received  a  whining  letter  from  a 
working-man's  club  in  the  north  of  London.  They 
said  that  they  numbered  exactly  thirty,  that  my 
periodical  was  absolutely  necessary  to  them,  and 
that  they  could  not  possibly  afford  half-a-crown. 
They  were  mostly  school  teachers.  I  answered  per- 
fectly seriously  that  if  my  periodical  was  so  abso- 
lutely necessary  to  the  saving  of  their  souls,  there 
were  exactly  thirty  of  them,  so  that  to  purchase  a 
copy  for  their  club  would  cost  each  of  them  exactly 
one  penny  per  month.  I  suggested  that  if  each  one 
of  them  would  once  a  month  walk  a  penny  tram-fare, 
or  smoke  one-sixty-fourth  of  a  pound  less  tobacco, 
or  drink  one-quarter  of  a  pint  less  beer,  or  go  for  one 
day  without  a  daily  paper,  their  club  might  very  well 
purchase  monthly  a  copy  of  my  so  necessary  period- 
ical. I  received  in  reply  a  note  from  the  secretary 
of  that  club  stating  that  my  letter  was  ribald,  in- 
sulting, and  utterly  unsympathetic  to  the  woes  of 

274 


HEROES  AND  SOME  HEROINES 

the  poor  who  had  paid  me  an  undeserved  compli- 
ment. 

No.  I  do  not  think  that  the  workman,  the  school 
teacher,  and  the  rest  of  them  will  be  any  better  masters 
for  literature  which  is  falling  under  their  dominance. 
And  I  do  not  see  any  hope  of  improvement  until  the 
state  supplies  literature  free.  That,  of  course,  is 
coming,  but  I  have  no  doubt  that  the  state  will  sweat 
the  author  even  more  mercilessly  than  do,  in  effect, 
the  millionaire,  the  shopkeeper,  the  school  teacher, 
and  the  workman  of  to-day.  For  all  these  people 
demand  such  literature  as  they  have  time,  or  deign, 
to  consume — they  demand  it  at  derisowly  cheap  rates. 
And  you  cannot  have  good  new  literature  cheaply. 
It  cannot  be  done,  simply  because  the  author,  too, 
has  the  right  to  live.  Of  course  you  may  have  cheap 
reprints  of  the  works  of  dead  authors — as  cheaply 
as  you  like,  for  the  state,  with  its  contempt  for  all 
things  of  the  mind,  steals  the  only  property  which  is 
really  created  by  any  man.  So  the  heirs  of  Shake- 
speare and  of  Dickens  may  go  starve,  while  their  non- 
copyright  editions  contribute  to  the  starvation  of 
succeeding  authors. 

That  authors  themselves  have  contributed  to  the 
want  of  interest  in  literature  that  the  public  displays 
is  also  true.  That  is  a  legacy  of  Pre-Raphaelism — 
the  worst  legacy  that  any  movement  ever  left  behind 
it.  For  those  young  men  from  whom  I  fled  into  the 
country  invented  later,  or  had  already  invented,  the 

275 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

dreary  shibboleth  that  literature  must  be  written  by 
those  who  have  read  the  "Cuchullain  Saga"  or  some- 
thing dull  and  pompous,  for  those  who  have  read 
similar  works.  Literature,  these  people  say,  is  of 
necessity  abstruse,  esoteric,  far-fetched  and  unread- 
able. Nothing  is  less  true,  nothing  more  fatal.  Great 
literature  always  is  and  always  has  been  popular. 
It  has  had,  that  is  to  say,  its  popular  appeal.  Homer 
was  a  popular  writer,  Virgil  was  a  popular  writer, 
Chaucer  wrote  in  what  was  then  called  the  vulgar 
tongue  for  the  common  people.  This,  too,  Dante  did. 
I  believe  that  Shakespeare  deliberately  "wrote  down" 
in  order  to  catch  the  ear  of  the  multitude.  Goethe 
was  one  of  the  most  popular  authors  of  his  day,  and 
the  most  popular  author  of  to-day  or  any  time  was 
also  the  finest  artist  of  his  own  or  any  day.  This  was 
Guy  de  Maupassant. 

Who,  I  wonder,  in  England  will  ever  realize  that 
literature,  besides  being  "elevating,"  is  a  gay  thing, 
is  a  pleasant  thing,  is  a  thing  made  for  the  increase 
of  joy,  of  mirth,  of  happiness,  and  of  those  tears 
which  are  near  to  joy  ?  It  is  the  business  of  a  book 
to  be  easy  to  read — to  be  as  easy  to  read  as  any  book 
upon  its  given  subject  possibly  can  be.  I  do  not  mean 
to  say  that  a  book  about  the  Treaty  of  Tilsit  can  ever 
be  as  easy  for  a  water-side  laborer  or  for  me  to  read 
as  a  work  about  things  that  I  or  the  water-side  laborer 
know  perfectly  well.  But  it  is  the  duty  of  the 
author  to  capture  attention,  and  then  to  make 

276 


HEROES  AND  SOME  HEROINES 

his  subject  plain ;  there  is  no  othej— duty  of  an 
author. 

It  is  not  for  him  to  pose  as  a  priest  dwelling  among 
obscurities.  If  his  readers,  if  his  lovers,  will  regard 
him  as  priest  it  is  very  well.  Or,  if  his  readers,  if  his 
lovers,  will  find  and  seek  to  cast  light  upon  obscurities 
in  his  pages  it  will  be  still  better,  for  that  will  mean 
that  in  them  he  has  awakened  thought  and  emotions. 
And  when  an  author — when  any  artist — has  awakened 
in  another  person  thoughts  and  emotions,  he  is,  to 
the  measure  of  the  light  vouchsafed  him,  blessed 
indeed.  This  author  will  have  told  his  tale  in  lan- 
guage as  simple  as  his  personality  will  permit  him  to 
use,  in  thoughts  as  simple  as  God  will  give  him. 

Here  stand  I,  the  man  in  the  street.  I  have  no 
special  knowledge,  I  have  no  special  gifts.  I  desire 
to  be  interested  as  I  was  interested  when  I  read  in 
the  coal-cellar  the  adventures  of  Harkaway  Dick. 
I  desire  to  be  interested  as  I  was  interested  when  I 
first  read  Ivanhoe,  Lear,  Nicholas  Nickleby,  La 
Maison  Tellier,  Fathers  and  Children,  The  Trial  of 
Joan  of  Arc,  The  Arabian  Nights,  or — twenty  years 
ago — The  Dolly  Dialogues  or  Daisy  Miller.  You  see, 
the  poor  man  in  the  street  is  catholic  enough  in  his 
tastes.  And  he  has  a  passionate  desire  to  be  inter- 
ested. This  is  indeed  the  noblest  and  the  finest  of  all 
desires,  since  it  means  that  he  desires  to  enter  into 
the  fortunes,  the  hopes,  the  very  hearts  of  his  fellow- 
men,  and  it  is  in  this  way  and  in  no  other  that  litera- 

277 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

ture  can  render  a  man  better.  I  once  lent  a  book 
to  an  old  and  quite  ignorant  cottage  woman  who  had 
always  had  a  taste  for  reading  novels.  And  there  are 
few  cottage  people  who  will  not  read  novels  with 
avidity.  Some  days  afterward  I  went  in  to  see  this  old 
woman.  The  tears  were  dropping  down  her  cheeks, 
and  she  was  wiping  them  away  as  fast  as  she  could. 
She  had  just  finished  the  book  in  question.  She  said: 

"Ah!  aw  do  jest  love  yon  book.  It  does  me  all 
the  good  in  the  world.  Aw  feels  a  score  of  years 
leeter  for  the  cry!" 

This  book  was  Fathers  and  Children.  Yet  what 
was  Bazarow  to  her,  or  she  to  Bazarow  ? 

And  there  the  matter  is  in  a  nutshell.  Here  I 
stand  and  cry  for  such  a  writer,  and  when  such  a 
writer,  with  such  a  purpose,  disregarding  all  shib- 
boleths, considering  himself  not  as  a  priest  who  has 
to  express  "himself  but  as  quite  a  humble  man 
who  has  before  him  the  task  of  interesting  me  and 
the  millions  that  I  represent — when  this  writer  comes 
he  will  sweep  away  all  barriers.  No  markets  will 
be  closed  to  him,  and  no  doors;  there  will  be  no 
hearts  that  he  will  not  enter  and  no  hearth  that  will 
not  welcome  him  as  its  guest.  He  will  be  honored 
by  emperors,  and  ploughmen  will  desire  to  take  his 
hand.  Wealth  will  be  his  beyond  belief,  and  power. 
And  he  will  be  such  a  priest  as  Moses  was,  or  those 
who  were  greater  than  Moses.  But  I  do  not  think 
that  he  will  have  the  "  Cuchullain  Saga  "  by  heart. 

278 


XIII 

CHANGES 

I  WAS  walking  the  other  day  down  one  of  the 
stretches  of  main  road  of  the  west  of  London. 
Rather  low  houses  of  brownish  brick  recede  a  little 
way  from  the  road  behind  gardens  of  their  own,  or 
behind  little  crescents  common  to  each  group  of 
houses.  Omnibuses  pass  numerously  before  them, 
and  there  is  a  heavy  traffic  of  motor-vehicles,  because 
the  road  leads  out  into  the  country  toward  the  west. 
But  since  this  particular  day  happened  to  be  a  Sun- 
day, the  stretch  of  road,  perhaps  half  a  mile  in  length, 
was  rather  empty.  I  could  see  only  two  horse  'buses, 
a  brougham,  and  a  number  of  cyclists.  And  at  that 
moment  it  occurred  to  me  to  think  that  there  were 
no  changes  here  at  all.  There  was  nothing  at  that 
moment  to  tell  me  that  I  was  not  the  small  boy  that 
thirty  years  ago  used,  with  great  regularity,  to  walk 
along  that  stretch  of  road  in  order  to  go  into  Kensing- 
ton Gardens.  It  was  a  remarkably  odd  sensation. 
For  the  moment  I  seemed  to  be  back  there,  I 
seemed  to  be  a  child  again,  rather  timid  and  won- 
deringly  setting  out  upon  tremendous  adventures 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

that  the  exploring  of  London  streets  then  seemed  to 
entail. 

And  having  thus  dipped  for  a  moment  into  a  past 
as  unattainable  as  is  the  age  of  Homer,  I  came  back 
very  sharply  before  the  first  of  the  horse  'buses  and 
the  fourth  small  band  of  cyclists  had  passed  me — 
I  came  back  to  wondering  about  what  changes  the 
third  of  a  century  that  I  can  remember  had  wrought 
in  London  and  in  us.  It  is  sometimes  pleasant,  it 
is  nearly  always  salutary,  thus  to  take  stock.  Con- 
sidering myself,  it  was  astonishing  how  little  I  seemed 
to  myself  to  have  changed  since  I  was  a  very  little 
boy  in  a  velveteen  coat  with  gold  buttons  and  long 
golden  ringlets.  I  venture  to  obtrude  this  small 
piece  of  personality  because  it  is  a  subject  that  has 
always  interested  me — the  subject,  not  so  much  of 
myself,  as  in  how  far  the  rest  of  humanity  seem  to 
themselves  to  resemble  me.  I  mean  that  to  myself 
I  never  seemed  to  have  grown  up.  This  circumstance 
strikes  me  most  forcibly  when  I  go  into  my  kitchen. 
I  perceive  saucepans,  kitchen  spoons,  tin  canisters, 
chopping  -  boards,  egg  -  beaters,  and  objects  whose 
very  names  I  do  not  even  know.  I  perceive  these 
objects,  and  suddenly  it  comes  into  my  mind — though 
I  can  hardly  believe  it — that  these  things  actually 
belong  to  me.  I  can  really  do  what  I  like  with  them 
if  I  want  to.  I  might  positively  use  the  largest  of 
the  saucepans  for  making  butterscotch,  or  I  might 
fill  the  egg-beater  with  ink  and  churn  it  up.  For 

280 


CHANGES 


such  were  the  adventurous  aspirations  of  my  child- 
hood when  I  peeped  into  the  kitchen,  which  was 
a  forbidden  and  glamourous  place  inhabited  by  a 
forbidding  moral  force  known  as  Cook.  And  that 
glamour  still  persists,  that  feeling  still  remains.  I  do 
not  really  very  often  go  into  my  kitchen,  although 
it,  and  all  it  contains,  are  my  property.  I  do  not  go 
into  it  because,  lurking  at  the  back  of  my  head,  I  have 
always  the  feeling  that  I  am  a  little  boy  who  will 
be  either  "spoken  to"  or  spanked  by  a  mysterious 
They.  In  my  childhood  They  represented  a  host  of 
clearly  perceived  persons:  my  parents,  my  nurse, 
the  housemaid,  the  hardly  ever  visible  cook,  a  day- 
school  master,  several  awful  entities  in  blue  who 
hung  about  in  the  streets  and  diminished  seriously 
the  enjoyment  of  life,  and  a  large  host  of  unnamed 
adults  who  possessed  apparently  remarkable  and 
terrorizing  powers.  All  these  people  were  restraints. 
Nowadays,  as  far  as  I  know,  I  have  no  restraints. 
No  one  has  a  right,  no  one  has  any  authority,  to 
restrain  me.  I  can  go  where  I  like;  I  can  do  what 
I  like;  I  can  think,  say,  eat,  drink,  touch,  break, 
whatever  I  like  that  is  within  the  range  of  my  own 
small  empire.  And  yet  till  the  other  day  I  had  con- 
stantly at  the  back  of  my  mind  the  fear  of  a  mysterious 
They — a  feeling  that  has  not  changed  in  the  least 
since  the  day  when  last  I  could  not  possibly  resist  it, 
and  I  threw  from  an  upper  window  a  large  piece  of 
whiting  at  the  helmet  of  a  policeman  who  was  stand- 

281 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

ing  in  the  road  below.  Yesterday  I  felt  quite  a  strong 
desire  to  do  the  same  thing  when  a  bag  of  flour  was 
brought  to  me  for  my  inspection  because  it  was  said  to 
be  mouldy.  There  was  the  traffic  going  up  and  down 
underneath  my  windows,  there  was  the  sunlight,  and 
there,  his  buckles  and  his  buttons  shining,  there 
positively,  on  the  other  side  of  the  road,  stalked  the 
policeman.  But  I  resisted  the  temptation.  My 
mind  travelled  rapidly  over  the  possibilities.  I  won- 
dered whether  I  could  hit  the  policeman  at  the  dis- 
tance, and  presumed  I  could.  I  wondered  whether 
the  policeman  would  be  able  to  identify  the  house 
from  which  the  missile  came,  and  presumed  he  would 
not.  I  wondered  whether  the  servant  could  be  trusted 
not  to  peach,  and  presumed  she  could.  I  considered 
what  it  would  cost  me,  and  imagined  that,  at  the 
worst,  the  price  would  be  something  less  than  that  of 
a  stall  at  a  theatre,  while  I  desired  to  throw  the  bag 
of  flour  very  much  more  than  I  have  ever  desired  to 
go  to  a  theatre.  And  yet,  as  I  have  said,  I  resisted 
the  temptation.  I  was  afraid  of  a  mysterious  They. 
Or,  again,  I  could  remember  very  distinctly  as  a 
small  boy  staring  in  at  the  window  of  a  sweet-shop 
near  Gower  Street  Station  and  perceiving  that  there 
brandy  balls  might  be  had  for  the  price  of  only  four- 
pence  a  pound.  And  I  remember  thinking  that 
I  had  discovered  the  secret  of  perpetual  happiness. 
With  a  pound  of  brandy  balls  I  could  be  happy  from 
one  end  of  the  day  to  the  other.  I  was  aware  that 

282 


CHANGES 


grown-up  people  were  sometimes  unhappy,  but  no 
grown-up  person  I  ever  thought  was  possessed  of 
less  than  fourpence  a  day.  My  doubts  as  to  the 
distant  future  vanished  altogether.  I  knew  that 
whatever  happened  to  others,  I  was  safe.  Alas!  I 
do  not  think  that  I  have  tasted  a  brandy  ball  for 
twenty  years.  When  I  have  finished  my  day's  work 
I  shall  send  out  for  a  pound  of  them,  though  I  am 
informed  that  the  price  has  risen  to  sixpence.  But 
though  I  cannot  imagine  that  their  possession  will 
make  me  happy  even  for  the  remaining  hours  of  this 
one  day,  yet  I  have  not  in  the  least  changed,  really. 
I  know  what  will  make  me  happy  and  perfectly 
contented  when  I  get  it — symbolically  I  still  desire 
only  my  little  pound  of  sweets.  I  have  a  vague, 
but  very  strong,  feeling  that  every  one  else  in  the 
world  around  me,  if  the  garments  of  formality  and 
fashion  that  surround  them  could  only  be  pierced 
through — that  every  one  else  who  surrounds  me 
equally  has  not  grown  up.  They  have  not  in  essen- 
tials changed  since  they  were  small  children.  And 
the  murderer  who  to-morrow  will  have  the  hangman's 
noose  round  his  neck — I  am  informed  at  this  moment 
that  criminals  are  nowadays  always  executed  on 
Tuesdays  at  eleven  o'clock — so  let  us  say  that  a 
criminal  who  will  be  executed  next  Tuesday  at  that 
hour  will  feel,  when  the  rope  is  put  round  his  throat, 
an  odd,  pained  feeling  that  some  mistake  is  being 
made,  because  you  do  not  really  hang  a  child  of  six 
19  283 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

in  civilized  countries.  So  that  perhaps  we  have  not 
any  of  us  changed.  Perhaps  we  are  all  of  us  children, 
and  the  very  children  that  we  were  when  Victoria 
celebrated  her  first  jubilee  at  about  the  date  when 
Plancus  was  the  consul.  And  yet  we  are  conscious, 
all  of  us,  that  we  have  tremendously  changed  since 
the  date  when  Du  Maurier  gave  us  the  adventures 
of  Mr.  Cimabue  Brown. 

We  have  changed  certainly  to  the  extent  that  we 
cannot,  by  any  possibility,  imagine  ourselves  putting 
up  for  two  minutes  with  Mr.  Brown  at  a  friend's 
At  Home.  We  could  not  possibly  put  up  with  any 
of  these  people.  They  had  long,  drooping  beards; 
they  drawled;  they  come  back  to  one  as  being  ex- 
tremely gentle,  and  their  trousers  were  enormous. 
Moreover,  the  women  wore  bustles  and  skin-tight 
jerseys.  (I  have  a  friend  the  top  cushions  of  whose 
ottomans  are  entirely  filled  with  her  discarded  bustles. 
I  cannot  imagine  what  she  could  have  been  doing 
with  so  many  of  these  articles.  After  all,  the  fashion 
of  wearing  them  did  not  last  for  ten  years;  and  the 
bustle  was  itself  a  thing  which,  not  being  on  view, 
could  hardly  have  needed  to  change  its  shape  month 
by  month.  So  that,  although  the  friend  in  question 
already  possesses  nine  Chantecler  hats  and  may,  in 
consequence,  be  said  to  pay  some  attention  to  her 
personal  appearance,  I  cannot  imagine  what  she  did 
with  this  considerable  mass  of  unobstrusive  adorn- 
ments.) 

284 


CHANGES 


In  those  days  people  seem  to  have  been  extra- 
ordinarily slow.  It  was  not  only  that  they  dined  at 
seven  and  went  about  in  four-wheelers;  it  was  not 
only  that  they  still  asked  each  other  to  take  pot  luck 
(I  am  just  informed  that  no  really  modern  young 
person  any  longer  understands  what  this  phrase 
means).  It  is  not  only  that  nowadays  if  we  chance 
to  have  to  remain  in  town  in  August  we  do  not  any 
longer  pull  down  the  front  blinds,  live  in  our  kitchen, 
and  acquire  by  hook  or  by  crook  a  visitor's  guide  to 
Homburg,  with  which  we  could  delude  our  friends 
and  acquaintances  on  their  return  from  Brighton 
into  the  idea  that  in  the  German  spa  we  had  rubbed 
shoulders  with  the  great  and  noble.  It  is  not  only 
that  our  menus  now  soar  beyond  the  lofty  ideal  of 
hot  roast  beef  for  Sunday,  cold  for  Monday,  hash  for 
Tuesday,  leg  of  mutton  for  Wednesday,  cold  on 
Thursday,  and  so  on;  it  is  that  we  seem  altogether 
to  have  changed.  It  is  true  that  we  have  not  grown 
up,  but  we  are  different  animals.  If  we  should  open 
a  file  of  the  Times  for  1875  and  find  that  the  leader 
writer  agreed  with  some  of  our  sentiments  to-day, 
we  should  be  as  much  astonished  as  we  are  when  we 
find  on  Egyptian  monuments  that  the  lady  who  set 
snares  for  the  virtue  of  Joseph  was  dissatisfied  with 
the  state  of  her  linen  when  it  came  home  from  the 
wash. 

Now  where  exactly  do  these  changes,  as  the  phrase 
is,  come  in  ?  Why  should  one  feel  such  a  shock  of 

285 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

surprise  at  discovering  that  a  small  slice  of  High 
Street,  Kensington,  from  the  Addison  Road  railway 
bridge  to  the  Earl's  Court  Road  has  not  "changed"? 
Change  has  crept  right  up  to  the  public-house  at 
the  corner.  Why,  only  yesterday  I  noticed  that  the  , 
pastry  cook's  next  door  to  the  public-house  was  "to 
let/'  This  is  a  great  and  historic  change.  As  a 
boy  I  used  to  gaze  into  its  windows  and  perceive  a 
model  of  Windsor  Castle  in  icing-sugar.  And  that 
castle  certainly  appeared  to  me  larger  and  more  like 
what  a  real  castle  ought  to  be  than  did  Windsor 
Castle,  which  I  saw  for  the  first  time  last  month.  I 
am  told  that  at  that  now  vanished  confectioner's  you 
could  get  an  excellent  plate  of  ox-tail  soup  and  a  cut 
off  the  joint  for  lunch.  Let  me  then  give  it  the  alms 
for  oblivion  of  this  tear.  Across  the  front  of  another 
confectioner's  near  here  is  painted  the  inscription, 
"  Routs  catered  for."  What  was  a  rout  ?  I  suppose 
it  was  some  sort  of  party,  but  what  did  you  do  when 
you  got  there  ?  I  remember  reading  a  description 
by  Albert  Smith  of  a  conversazione  at  somebody's 
private  house,  and  a  conversazione  in  those  days 
was  the  most  modern  form  of  entertainment.  Appar- 
ently it  consisted  in  taking  a  lady's  arm  and  wander- 
ing round  among  showcases.  The  host  and  hostess 
had  borrowed  wax  models  of  anatomical  dissections 
of  a  most  realistic  kind  from  the  nearest  hospital,  and 
this  formed  the  amusement  provided  for  the  guests, 
weak  negus  and  seed  biscuits  being  the  only  refresh- 

286 


CHANGES 


ment.  This  entertainment  was  spoken  of  in  terms  of 
reprobation  by  Mr.  Albert  Smith — in  the  same  terms 
as  we  might  imagine  would  be  adopted  by  a  popular 
moralist  in  talking  of  the  doings  of  the  smart  set 
to-day.  Mr.  Smith  considered  that  it  constituted  a 
lamentably  wild  form  of  dissipation  and  one  which  no 
lady  who  was  really  a  lady  ought  to  desire  to  attend. 

Yes,  very  decidedly,  we  have  changed  all  that. 
Though  we  have  not  grown  up,  though  we  are  still 
children,  we  want  something  more  exciting  than 
anatomical  dissections  in  glass  cases  when  we  are 
asked  out  of  an  evening.  We  have  grown  harder, 
we  have  grown  more  rapid  in  our  movements,  we 
have  grown  more  avid  of  sensation,  we  have  grown 
more  contemptuous  of  public  opinion,  we  have  become 
the  last  word. 

But  if  we  are  more  avid  of  sensations,  if  we  are 
restless  more  to  witness  or  to  possess,  to  go  through 
or  to  throw  away  always  a  greater  and  greater  number 
of  feelings  or  events  or  objects,  we  are,  I  should  say, 
less  careful  in  our  selections.  The  word  "exquisite" 
has  gone  almost  as  completely  out  of  our  vocabulary 
as  the  words  "pot  luck."  And  for  the  same  reason. 
We  are  no  longer  expected  to  take  pot  luck,  because 
our  hostess,  by  means  of  the  telephone,  can  always 
get  from  round  the  corner  some  sort  of  ready-made 
confection  that  has  only  to  be  stood  for  ten  minutes 
in  a  bain-marie  to  form  a  course  of  an  indifferent 
dinner.  She  would  do  that  if  she  were  mildly  old- 

287 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

fashioned.  If  she  were  at  all  up  to  date  she  would 
just  say,  "Oh,  don't  bother  to  come  all  this  way  out. 
Let's  meet  at  the  Dash  and  dine  there."  In  either 
case  pot  luck  has  gone,  as  has  "dropping  in  of  an 
evening."  Social  events  in  all  classes  are  now  so 
frequent;  a  pleasant,  leisurely  impromptu  fore- 
gathering is  so  seldom  practicable  that  we  seldom 
essay  it. 

Dining  in  restaurants  is  in  many  ways  gay,  pleasant, 
and  desirable.  It  renders  us  on  the  one  hand  more 
polite,  it  renders  us  on  the  other  less  sincere,  less 
intimate  with  our  friends,  and  less  exacting.  We  have 
to  be  tidier  and  more  urbane,  but  on  the  other  hand 
we  cannot  so  tyrannically  exact  of  the  cook  that  the 
dishes  shall  be  impeccable.  We  are  democratized. 
If  in  a  restaurant  we  make  a  horrible  noise  because 
the  fish  is  not  absolutely  all  that  it  should  be,  we 
shall  have  it  borne  in  upon  us  that  we  are  only  two  or 
three  out  of  several  hundred  customers,  that  we  may 
go  elsewhere,  and  that  we  shall  not  get  anything 
better  anywhere  else.  If  the  tipping  system  were 
abolished  it  would  be  impossible  to  get  a  decent  meal 
anywhere  in  London. 

At  present  it  is  difficult.  It  is  difficult,  that  is  to 
say,  to  get  a  good  meal  anywhere  with  certainty. 
You  may  patronize  a  place  for  a  month  and  live  well, 
or  very  well.  Then  suddenly  something  goes  wrong, 
everything  goes  wrong,  a  whole  menu  is  uneatable. 
The  cook  may  have  gone;  the  management,  set  on 

288 


CHANGES 


economizing,  will  have  substituted  margarine  for 
real  butter  in  cooking;  the  business  may  have  become 
a  limited  company  with  nothing  left  to  it  but  the  old 
name  and  redecorated  premises.  And  five  hundred 
customers  will  not  know  any  difference.  Provided 
that  a  book  has  a  binding  with  a  sufficiency  of  gilt; 
provided  that  a  dinner  has  its  menu;  provided  that 
a  picture  has  its  frame,  a  book's  a  book,  a  dinner's 
a  dinner,  a  picture  will  cover  so  much  wall-space,  and, 
being  cheapened,  will  find  buyers  enough. 

And  this  tendency  pervades  every  class  of  estab- 
lishment; it  is  not  only  that  French  cookery  is  every- 
where very  risky  to  set  out  upon.  Always  repulsive 
in  appearance  and  hopelessly  indigestible,  English 
plain  cooking  is  dead.  At  my  birth  I  was  put  up 
for  election  at  an  old  club  that  has  now  disappeared. 
My  name  came  up  for  election  when  I  was  eighteen, 
and  I  was  allowed,  with  proper  restrictions — when, 
as  it  were,  I  was  accompanied  by  a  nurse — I  was 
allowed  the  use  of  the  premises.  The  members  were 
almost  all  Anglo-Indians  of  considerable  age,  and 
many  were  of  a  fine  stinginess.  They  used  to  find  the 
club  prices  for  meals  unthinkable,  and  it  was  their 
habit,  about  lunch-time  or  toward  seven,  to  toddle 
off"  to  an  eating-house  in  the  immediate  neighborhood. 
Here,  for  the  sum  of  eightpence,  they  would  obtain 
a  plate  of  meat  and  a  piece  of  bread.  There  were  no 
table-cloths  on  the  tables,  that  were  covered  with  black 
leather  wiped  clean  with  a  wet  cloth;  table-napkins 

289 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

cost  a  penny,  and  the  floors  were  sanded.  But  the 
food  was  splendid  of  its  kind,  and  the  company  con- 
sisted entirely  of  venerable  clubmen.  There  was  a 
special  brew  of  ale,  the  best  in  the  world;  the  cheese 
was  always  the  finest  October,  and  a  really  wonderful 
port  was  to  be  had.  My  venerable  fellow-members, 
however,  as  a  rule  limited  themselves  to  their  plate 
of  meat,  after  which  they  would  walk  back  to  the  club. 
Here  they  could  have  bread  and  cheese  and  a  glass 
of  ale  for  nothing.  (I  wonder  if  there  is  still  in  London 
any  club  like  this  ?  I  know  there  is  one  yet  where 
your  change  is  washed  and  wrapped  in  tissue-paper.) 
But  there  was  the  club  and  there  was  the  Dash  eating- 
house. 

The  other  day  I  was  anxious  to  prove  to  a  stranger 
that  London  was  the  cheapest  city  in  the  world,  and 
casting  about  in  my  mind  for  a  means  of  proof  I 
remembered  the  Dash.  It  was  still  there.  The  low 
rooms  were  the  same;  the  leather-covered  tables 
were  the  same.  The  menus  were  the  same;  but  dis- 
may came  upon  me  when  I  observed  that  every  item 
on  the  menu  was  a  penny  cheaper.  And  napkins  were 
handed  to  us  gratis! 

And  then  the  meat.  Oh  dear!  And  the  old  special 
ale  was  no  more  to  be  had;  the  place  was  tied  to  a 
London  brewery.  And  the  cheese  was  Canadian! 
The  place,  you  see,  had  been  discovered  by  the  city 
clerk.  There  was  not  one  old  face,  not  one  bald  head 
there.  The  new  management  had  taken  in  many 

290 


CHANGES 


more  rooms.  I  do  not  know  if  anywhere  there  was 
written  Ichabod  on  the  walls,  and  no  old  waiter  sadly 
deplored  the  changes,  for  we  were  waited  upon  by 
girls.  The  food  was  tepid  and  tough,  but  as  I  paid 
my  ridiculously  tiny  bill  the  voice  of  a  clerk  behind 
me  remarked,  "Quite  the  good  old  times."  So  that 
there  we  are. 

If  I  try  to  illustrate  my  meaning  in  terms  of  eating 
rather  than  by  illustrations  less  material  it  is  not 
that  exactly  similar  processes  are  not  observable 
everywhere  else.  We  grow  more  rapid,  but  our 
senses  are  coarsened;  we  grow  more  polite,  we  grow 
even  more  tolerant,  but  we  seek  less  earnestly  after 
the  truth.  In  the  seventies  and  eighties  men  were 
intolerably  slow,  but  they  had  enthusiasms.  A  writer 
thought  more  about  writing,  a  painter  thought  more 
about  painting,  a  preacher,  for  the  matter  of  that, 
more  about  preaching.  A  quixotic  act  to-day  is 
regarded  as  something  almost  criminal  if  it  entails 
loss  of  money.  It  is  not  so  long  since  the  word  quixotic 
meant  foolish  but  fine,  whereas  nowadays,  so  seldom 
does  any  action  really  quixotic  occur,  that  it  is  almost 
invariably  regarded  with  suspicion,  and  the  person 
indulging  himself  in  such  an  action  is  apt  to  find 
himself  avoided.  His  friends  may  think  that  he  is 
"going  to  get  something  out  of  it"  that  they  cannot 
see,  and  they  dread  lest  that  something  be  got  out  of 
themselves.  Probably  we  have  not  gained  much, 
probably  we  have  not  lost  much.  Probably  the  thinker 

291 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

has  a  worse  time  of  it;  the  unthinking  certainly  have 
an  immensely  better  one.  The  squalor  and  the  filth 
of  the  existence  of  the  poor  in  the  seventies  and  eighties 
are  almost  unthinkable  to-day.  I  am  physically  and 
mentally  in  the  most  wretched  state  when  I  happen 
to  travel  by  one  of  the  London  "tubes/'  The  noise  is 
barbaric,  the  smell  of  humanity  sickening,  and  the 
sight  of  the  comparatively  imbecile  faces  of  my  fellow- 
townsmen  of  the  middle  and  lower  classes  is  sometimes 
more  depressing  than  I  can  stand.  For  what  can 
be  more  depressing  than  to  sit  with  forty  or  fifty 
of  one's  fellow-beings  in  a  strong  light,  all  of  them 
barbarously  and  unbecomingly  clad  and  each  of  them 
with  a  face  dull,  heavy,  unvivacious,  to  all  appear- 
ances incapable  of  a  ray  of  human  intelligence,  of  a 
scintilla  of  original  thought  ?  So,  at  least,  I  imagine 
the  late  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  thinking  if  his  ghost 
could  come  once  more  from  the  shades  of  the  billiard- 
room  of  the  Athenaeum  Club  and,  paying  his  two- 
pence, descend  into  the  lift  and  take  the  tube  from 
Shepherd's  Bush  to  Tottenham  Court  Road.  (This, 
by  -  the  -  bye,  would  pretty  exactly  have  represented 
Mr.  Spencer's  attitude.  That  gentleman  once  sat 
at  table  next  to  a  connection  of  my  own  for  three 
consecutive  days.  He  sat  in  deep  silence.  Upon 
the  fourth  day  he  took  from  his  ears  two  little  pads 
of  cotton -wool.  He  exhibited  them  to  the  lady 
and  remarking,  "I  stop  my  ears  with  these  when 
I  perceive  there  is  no  one  at  the  table  likely  to 

292 


CHANGES 


afford  rational  conversation,"  he  put  them  back 
again.) 

But  if  the  thinker,  if  the  man  with  a  taste  for  the 
exquisite,  have  to-day  a  pretty  bad  time  of  it  unless 
he  stops  at  home,  all  we  humbler  people  get  through 
our  little  lives  and  accomplish  our  ultimate  end  in 
becoming  the  stuff  that  fills  graveyards,  upon  the 
whole  much  more  agreeably.  If  exquisite  editions 
of  books  are  not  at  our  hand,  we  get  them  plentifully 
in  editions  of  an  extreme  cheapness.  If  we  desire 
to  see  pictures,  it  will  no  longer  be  an  expedition  of  a 
day  to  go  from  Hammersmith,  which  is  now  called 
West  Kensington  Park,  to  the  National  Gallery. 

I  can  remember  very  well  the  time  when  it  meant 
a  tenpenny  'bus  fare  and  an  hour's  slow  drive  to  go 
from  Hammersmith  to  Trafalgar  Square,  and  it 
cost  as  much  and  took  as  long  to  go  from  Shepherd's 
Bush  to  Oxford  Circus.  And  these  sums  and  these 
spaces  of  time,  when  they  come  to  be  doubled,  require 
to  be  seriously  thought  about.  Nowadays  we  do  not 
think  at  all.  Life  is  much  fuller,  and  I  fancy  we  value 
a  visit  to  the  National  Gallery  much  less.  But  if  we 
value  it  less,  still  it  is  more  agreeable.  I  remember 
travelling  in  an  odious  horse-box  of  grimy  yellow  wood 
in  an  intolerable  stench  of  sulphur  and  shag  tobacco 
along  with  eleven  navvies  in  the  horrid  old  under- 
ground trains.  The  conditions  were  unspeakable, 
the  fares  relatively  high.  This  occurred  to  me  perhaps 
once  or  twice,  but  they  must  have  been  the  daily  con- 

293 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

ditions  of  how  very  large  a  class!  Nowadays  our 
friend  the  workman  steps  into  a  clean  lift  and  descends 
into  cool,  white,  brilliantly  lit  tunnels  that  twenty-five 
years  ago  would  have  been  things  entirely  beyond  his 
experience  or  his  dreams.  And  because  of  them,  too, 
he  can  live  farther  out,  in  a  cleaner  air,  in  conditions 
immeasurably  superior.  Routs  are  no  longer  catered 
for,  leisure  is  an  unknown  thing,  and  the  old-fashioned 
confectioner's  shop  will  be  pulled  down  to  make  way 
for  a  cheap-jack  of  some  sort,  inhabiting  a  terra-cotta 
palace  with  great  plate-glass  windows  and  white, 
soft-stone  facings.  There  will  be  about  the  new  man 
something  meretricious,  flashy,  and  not  altogether 
desirable.  I  do  not  know  that  I  shall  ever  want  to 
go  into  such  a  shop,  but  to  many  people  the  little 
pictures  on  tickets  that  are  given  away  with  his  little 
packets  of  cigarettes — to  a  great  many  hundreds  of 
simple  and  kindly  people,  the  arms  of  the  city  of  Bath 
or  the  portrait  of  the  infant  son  of  the  King  of  Spain 
will  afford  great  and  harmless  joy  and  excitement. 
I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  in  the  pockets  of  this  great 
alluvial  world  of  humanity  the  old  order  will  not  re- 
main in  an  even  astonishing  degree. 

I  was  talking  the  other  day  to  a  woman  of  position 
when  she  told  me  that  her  daughters  were  immeasur- 
ably freer  than  she  had  been  at  their  age.  I  asked 
her  if  she  would  let  her  daughters  walk  about  alone 
in  the  streets.  "Oh,  dear,  yes,"  she  said.  I  asked 
her  whether  she  would  allow  one  of  them  to  walk 

294 


CHANGES 


down  Bond  Street  alone.  "Oh,  dear,  certainly  not 
Bond  Street!"  she  said.  I  tried  to  get  at  what  was 
the  matter  with  Bond  Street.  I  have  walked  down  it 
myself  innumerable  times  without  noticing  anything  to 
distinguish  it  from  any  other  street.  But  she  said  no, 
the  girl  might  walk  about  Sloane  Street  or  that  sort 
of  place,  but  certainly  not  Bond  Street.  I  should 
have  thought  myself,  from  observation,  that  Sloane 
Street  was  rather  the  haunt  of  evil  characters,  but  I  let 
the  matter  drop  when  my  friend  observed  that,  of 
course,  a  man  of  my  intelligence  must  be  only  laughing 
when  I  pretended  that  I  could  not  see  the  distinction. 
I  pursued  therefore  further  geographical  investiga- 
tions. I  asked  her  if  she  would  permit  her  daughter 
to  walk  along  the  Strand.  She  said:  "Good  gracious 
me!  The  Strand!  Why,  I  don't  suppose  the  child 
knows  where  it  is!"  I  said,  "But  the  Strand!"  "My 
dear  man,"  she  answered,  "what  should  she  want  to 
walk  along  the  Strand  for  ?  What  could  possibly 
take  her  to  the  Strand  ?"  I  suggested  timidly,  theatres. 
"  But  you  only  go  to  them  in  a  brougham,  muffled  up 
to  the  eyes.  She  wouldn't  see  which  way  she  was 
going."  And  she  called  to  her  daughter,  who  was  on 
the  other  side  of  the  room:  "My  dear,  do  you  know 
where  the  Strand  is  ?"  And  in  clear,  well-drilled  tones 
she  got  her  answer,  "No,  mamma,"  as  if  a  private 
were  answering  an  officer.  The  young  lady  was  cer- 
tainly twenty-five.  So  that  perhaps  the  old  order  does 
not  so  much  change.  Reflecting  upon  the  subject  of 

295 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

Bond  Street,  it  occurred  to  me  that  it  would  not  be 
so  much  a  question  of  the  maiden's  running  the  risk 
of  encountering  evil  characters  as  that,  since  every  one 
walks  down  Bond  Street,  every  one  would  see  her 
walking  there  alone.  You  have  got  to  make  the  con- 
cession to  modern  opinion,  you  have  got  to  let  your 
daughter  go  out  without  an  attendant  maid,  but  you 
do  not  want  to  let  anybody  know  that  you  have  done  it. 
And  that,  after  all,  is  the  fine  old  British  spirit  gallantly 
manifesting  itself  in  an  unfriendly  day.  No  doubt, 
in  spite  of  the  constant  planing  that  we  are  under- 
going, in  spite  of  the  constant  attrition  that  constantly 
ensues  when  man  rubs  against  man  all  day  long  in 
perpetual  short  flights,  each  flight  the  flight  of  a 
battalion;  in  spite  of  the  perpetual  noises  by  which 
we  are  deafened,  in  spite  of  the  perpetual  materialism 
to  which  we  are  forced  in  order  to  find  the  means  for 
all  this  restlessness — in  spite  of  it  all  the  "character" 
still  flourishes  among  us.  Perhaps  we  are  each  and 
every  one  of  us  characters,  each  and  every  one  of  us 
outwardly  cut  to  pattern  but  inwardly  as  eccentric 
as  an  old  gentleman  friend  of  mine  who  will  not  go 
to  bed  without  putting  his  boots  upon  the  mantel- 
piece! In  one  thing  I  think  we  have  changed.  I 
had  a  very  elderly  and  esteemed  relative  who  once 
told  me  that  while  walking  along  the  Strand  he  met  a 
lion  that  had  escaped  from  Exeter  Change.  I  said, 
"What  did  you  do?"  and  he  looked  at  me  with  con- 
tempt as  if  the  question  were  imbecile.  "Do?"  he 

296 


CHANGES 


said.  "Why,  I  took  a  cab."  I  imagine  that  still 
in  most  of  the  emergencies  of  this  life  we  fly  to  that 
refuge.  But  I  believe  that  the  poor  Strand  has  changed 
in  another  respect.  I  was  once  walking  along  the 
south  side — the  side  on  which  now  stand  the  Cecil 
and  Strand  hotels — when  my  grandfather,  happening 
to  drive  past  in  a  hansom,  sprang  suddenly  out  and, 
addressing  me  with  many  expletives  and  a  look  of 
alarm,  wanted  to  know  what  the  devil  I  was  doing 
on  that  side.  I  really  did  not  know  why  I  should  not 
be  there  or  how  it  differed  from  the  north  side,  but  he 
concluded  by  saying  that  if  he  ever  saw  me  there 
again  he  would  kick  me  straightway  out  of  his  house. 
So  that  I  suppose  in  the  days  of  Beau  Brummel  there 
must  have  been  unsavory  characters  in  that  now 
rigid  thoroughfare.  But  I  doubt  whether  to-day  we 
have  so  much  sense  of  locality  left.  One  street  is 
becoming  so  much  like  another,  and  Booksellers' 
Row  is  gone.  I  fancy  that  these  actual  changes  in 
the  aspect  of  the  city  must  make  a  difference  in  our 
psychologies.  You  cannot  be  quite  the  same  man 
if  daily  you  joggle  past  St.  Mary  Abbot's  Terrace  upon 
the  top  of  a  horse  'bus;  you  cannot  be  the  same  man 
if  you  shoot  past  the  terra-cotta,  plate-glass  erections 
that  have  replaced  those  gracious  old  houses  with  the 
triangle  of  unoccupied  space  in  front  of  them — if  you 
shoot,  rattle,  and  bang  past  them.  Your  thoughts 
must  be  different,  and  with  each  successive  blow  upon 
the  observation  your  brain  must  change  a  little  and  a 

297 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

little  more.  And  the  change  is  all  away  from  the 
direction  of  leisure,  of  spacious  thought,  of  ease. 
Each  acceleration  of  a  means  of  access  makes  you 
more  able  to  get  through  more  work  in  a  given  time, 
but  each  such  acceleration  gives  each  of  your  rivals 
exactly  the  same  chance.  With  each,  competition 
grows  sterner  and  sterner,  with  each  the  mere  struggle 
for  existence  becomes  more  and  more  fierce.  And  we 
leave  things  nowadays  so  irrevocably  behind  us.  It 
is  a  quaint  thought,  but  a  perfectly  sound  one,  to  say 
that  we  are  nearer  to  habits  of  barbarism,  that  we 
could  more  easily  revert  to  days  of  savagery  than  we 
could  pick  up  again  the  tone  of  thought,  of  mind  and 
habit,  of  the  men  of  thirty  years  ago.  The  terra-cotta 
and  plate-glass  will  inevitably  in  the  course  of  ages 
be  replaced  by  swamps,  marsh,  and  tidal  river-beds. 
That  will  return,  but  the  old  houses  of  St.  Mary 
Abbot's  Terrace  will  never  come  back.  And  as  these 
things  change,  so,  oddly,  do  our  appreciations  veer 
round.  It  was  the  custom  of  the  eighties  to  talk  of 
houses  like  those  of  Harley  Street  as  ugly,  square, 
brick  boxes,  as  the  most  contemptible  things  in  the 
world,  as  the  last  word  of  the  art  and  the  architecture 
of  a  miserable  bourgeoisie.  They  seemed  then  per- 
manent, hideous,  unassailable.  But  already  we  regard 
them  with  a  certain  tenderness,  and  consider  that 
they  may  soon  be  gone.  We  think  them  quaint, 
Georgian  and  lovable,  and  it  is  with  a  certain  regret 
that  we  realize  that  before  very  long  they,  too,  will  be 

298 


CHANGES 


swept  away  and  another  characteristic  piece  of  Lon- 
don will  be  gone  forever.  We  are  unifying  and  unify- 
ing and  unifying.  We  are  standardizing  ourselves 
and  we  are  doing  away  with  everything  that  is  out- 
standing. And  that,  I  think,  is  the  moral  to  it  all, 
the  moral  of  our  day  and  of  our  age.  We  are  making 
a  great  many  little  people  more  cheerful  and  more 
bearable  in  their  material  circumstances.  We  are 
knocking  for  the  select  few  the  flavor  of  the  finer  things 
out  of  life.  In  the  atmosphere  of  to-day  the  finer 
things  cannot  flourish.  There  is  no  air  for  them; 
there  is  no  time  for  them.  We  are  not  rich  enough; 
we  do  not  care  for  anything,  and  we  never  can  come 
to  care  for  anything  that  we  do  not  like  at  first.  And 
the  finer  the  flavor  the  longer  we  take  to  get  used  to  it. 
So  that  that  is  going,  and  many,  many,  many  little 
pleasures  are  coming.  Whether  you  like  it  or  whether 
you  do  not  depends  solely  upon  yourself.  There  is 
no  man  living  who  can  say  for  us  all  whether  it  is 
good  or  evil.  An  old  shoeblack  said  to  me  the  other 
day:  "These  are  bad  times  we  live  in,  sir.  Now  there 
ain't  so  many  horse  'buses,  there  ain't  so  much  mud  in 
the  streets,  and  it's  bitter  hard  to  get  a  living." 

20 


XIV 

AND    AGAIN    CHANGES 

WHEN  we  look  back  upon  the  lives  of  our  fathers 
the  first  thing  that  seems  to  strike  us  is  their 
intolerable  slowness,  and  then  the  gloom  in  which  they 
lived — or  perhaps  the  gloom  would  strike  us  first. 
Theirs  seemed  to  be  a  land  where  it  was  always  after- 
noon, with  large  gas-lamps  flaring  in  white  ground- 
glass  globes,  wasting  an  extraordinary  amount  of  light. 
So  that  when  I  read  in  a  novel  of  Miss  Thackeray's 
that  the  lovers  stepped  out  into  the  sunlit  park,  and 
the  gay  breezes  fluttered  their  voluminous  trousers 
or  their  flounced  crinolines,  I  simply  do  not  believe  it. 
I  do  not  believe  they  had  sunlight,  though  they  prob- 
ably had  a  park,  and  indeed  in  those  days  there  were 
more  elms  in  Kensington  Gardens  than  to-day  the 
Gardens  can  show.  They  certainly  must  have  had 
trousers  then,  and  as  for  crinolines,  will  not  your  old 
family  cook,  if  you  coax  her,  produce  from  a  cupboard 
somewhere  near  the  ceiling  of  the  kitchen  a  structure 
like  a  bird-cage  connected  by  strips  of  what  looks 
like  very  dirty  linen  ?  This,  she  will  assure  you  with 
an  almost  reverential  tone  of  voice,  was  the  last  crino- 

300 


AND   AGAIN   CHANGES 

line  she  ever  wore — and  she  says  that  she  hears  they 
are  coming  in  again.  They  are  always,  of  course, 
coming  in  again,  though  for  the  moment  skirts  are 
so  tight  that,  helping  a  lady  to  get  into  a  cab  yesterday, 
I  was  almost  tempted  to  pick  her  up  and  drop  her  in. 
I  thought  she  would  never  have  managed  it.  But 
no  doubt,  by  the  time  that  I  am  correcting  the  proofs 
of  what  I  have  just  written  "they"  will  be  "coming  in" 
again.  My  own  grandmother  used  to  say  that  she  was 
the  only  woman  in  London  who  never  wore  a  crinoline. 
That,  of  course,  was  Pre-Raphaelism,  but  I  feel  cer- 
tain that  she  did  wear  some  sort  of  whalebone  stiffening 
round  the  bottom  or  her  skirt,  if  she  did  not  have  a 
hoop  half-way  up. 

Yes,  they  certainly  had  crinolines,  but  I  do  not 
believe  they  had  any  fresh  breezes  to  blow  them 
about.  They  could  not  have  had.  It  was  always 
brown,  motionless  fog  in  those  days,  and  our  mothers 
and  grandmothers  sat  sewing  with  their  eyes  very 
close  to  the  candles.  I  do  not  believe  that  they  ever 
went  out.  What  did  they  have  to  go  out  in  ?  There 
were,  it  is  true,  four-wheelers  with  clean  straw  in  the 
bottom;  but  there  was  the  danger  that  if  you  went 
out  in  a  four-wheeler  a  straw  would  stick  in  the  bottom 
flounce  of  your  crinoline  and  would  show  that  you 
had  come  in  a  hired  conveyance  when  you  stepped  out 
into  the  comparative  brightness  of  your  rout  or  con- 
versazione. Of  course  if  you  were  of  the  mistily  ex- 
travagant class  that  kept  its  own  carriage,  you  might 

301 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

drive  somewhere,  but  I  do  not  believe  that  John 
would  take  the  horses  out  in  the  evening — John  being 
either  your  tyrannous  coachman  or  your  somnolent 
husband,  who  was  in  the  habit  of  reading  his  Times 
after  a  heavy  dinner  consisting  of  soup,  fish,  an  enor- 
mous joint,  and  probably  a  milk  pudding  which  you 
took  at  seven.  You  had  a  great  deal  of  heavy  mahog- 
any furniture,  so  that  it  took  the  footman  an  appre- 
ciable time  to  get  the  chairs  from  the  dining-room  wall 
and  arrange  them  round  the  solid  mahogany  table. 
But  time  did  not  matter  in  those  days;  you  had  all 
the  time  in  the  world  on  your  hands.  Why,  the  table- 
cloth was  even  whisked  off  the  table  after  dinner, 
over  the  heads  of  the  diners,  before  the  wine  circulated. 
I  know  at  least  in  some  families  that  was  done,  and 
I  dare  say  that  even  nowadays  you  could  find  some 
families  still  doing  it.  In  those  days,  too,  when  a 
telegram  came  the  lady  of  the  house  prepared  to  faint 
—the  lady's  maid  rushed  for  the  smelling-salts,  and 
a  sort  of  awful  hush  pervaded  the  house  from  the 
basement  to  the  garrets,  where  in  incredible  discom- 
fort the  servants  slept.  And  perhaps  some  of  this 
feeling  as  to  the  ominousness  of  telegrams  is  returning. 
Nowadays,  with  the  telephone  everywhere,  it  is  a  com- 
paratively rare  thing  to  receive  one  of  the  yellow 
envelopes — except  when  you  happen  to  be  away  at 
the  seaside  and  your  man  goes  off  with  your  silver- 
gilt  shaving  set.  I  think  I  have  only  received  one 
telegram  this  year,  and  that  from  a  gentleman  living 

302 


AND    AGAIN   CHANGES 

in  Richmond,  to  which  distant  place  modernity  has 
not  yet  spread.  And  this  slowness  of  pace  caused,  as 
I  have  elsewhere  pointed  out,  all  the  conditions  of  life 
to  be  very  different.  In  those  days  intimacies  be- 
tween man  and  man  and  woman  and  woman  were 
comparatively  frequent,  because  there  was  more 
home  life.  You  would  be  accustomed  to  have  some 
one  living  round  the  corner  who  came  in  every  evening 
and  smoked  a  cigar  with  you,  or  if  you  were  a  woman 
it  would  be  a  "  lady  friend "  who  brought  her  sewing. 
Nowadays  I  fancy  that  no  one  above  the  station  of  a 
housemaid  or  a  greengrocer's  assistant  would  have 
a  "lady  friend"  at  all,  or  would  at  least  use  those 
words  to  describe  her.  We  are  all  men  and  women 
nowadays,  and  we  have  not  got  any  friends. 

A  quarter  of  a  century  ago,  say,  there  were  prac- 
tically no  restaurants,  though  there  were  chop-houses 
for  men;  there  was  not  a  place  where  a  woman  could 
get  a  cup  of  tea  in  all  London  town.  This  I  fancy 
led  to  a  great  deal  of  drinking  among  ladies.  The 
respectable  married  woman  went  shopping;  she  felt 
tired,  she  entered  a  "confectioner's"  and  had  a  bath 
bun  and  a  glass  of  sherry.  So  it  began,  and  so  it 
went  on  from  sherry  through  cherry  brandy  to  the 
consumption  of  strong  drinks  at  home  in  secret.  And, 
again,  in  those  days  there  was  an  iniquitous  institu- 
tion peculiar  to  the  male  sex  called  a  club.  The  erring 
husband  returned  home  at  night.  Hanging  up  his 
umbrella  on  a  gas-bracket,  his  boots  upon  the  hat- 

3°3 


MEMORIES   AND    IMPRESSIONS 

rack,  and,  climbing  upstairs  in  his  stockinged  feet  to 
deposit  his  top  hat  on  the  ground  outside  his  bedroom 
door,  would  be  met  by  an  irate  female  in  a  yellow 
peignoir,  carrying  a  flat  candlestick  with  a  candle 
dripping  wax.  To  her  he  would  explain  that  he  had 
been  spending  his  evening  at  the  club,  when  really 
he  had  been  at  the  Alhambra,  which  in  those  days 
was  a  very  wicked  place.  I  fancy  that  London  middle 
and  upper  class  society  in  those  days  was  a  rather 
scandalous  and  horrid  affair.  Certainly  the  term 
middle-class  as  an  epithet  of  reproach  had  its  origin 
about  then.  London  was  full  of  a  lot  of  fat  and  overfed 
men  with  not  too  much  to  do  and  with  time  hanging 
heavily  on  their  hands.  Their  social  gifts  were  entirely 
undeveloped.  They  had  no  conversational  powers 
and  very  little  to  talk  about,  and  the  sexes  were  very 
much  shut  off  one  from  another. 

Flirtations  in  those  days  were  almost  impossible,  or 
they  became  secret  affairs  with  all  the  attributes  of 
guilt.  Nowadays  when  you  can  meet  anybody,  any- 
where, when  there  are  tea-shops,  picture  galleries, 
men's  clubs,  ladies'  clubs,  cock-and-hen  clubs,  res- 
taurants, and  the  rest-rooms  of  the  large  shops,  flirta- 
tions take  place  comparatively  in  public  and  you  do 
not  have  to  bolt  to  Boulogne  in  order  to  have  a  ten 
minutes'  tete-a-tete,  which  is  all  you  might  require  to 
bore  you  with  a  member  of  the  opposite  sex.  But  in 
the  seventies  and  eighties  there  was  nothing  else  in 
the  world  to  do,  just  as  in  centuries  before  there  had 

3°4 


AND    AGAIN   CHANGES 

been  nothing  else  to  do.  We  are  supposed  to  be  more 
frivolous  and  I  dare  say  we  are,  but  I  should  say 
that  on  the  whole  we  are  healthier  and  less  vicious. 
We  are,  that  is  to  say,  more  natural.  We  can  get  a 
great  deal  more  of  what  we  want  without  kicking  our 
shoes  over  windmills,  and  we  do  not  want  so  much 
more  than  we  can  get.  For  the  matter  of  that,  it  is 
easy  to  get  much  farther  than  we  ever  want  to. 

There  used  to  be  a  time  when  it  was  the  height  of 
dissipation  to  dine  on  the  terrace  of  the  Star  and 
Garter  at  Richmond.  One  of  Ouida's  heroines,  who 
was,  I  believe,  no  better  than  she  should  be,  is  at  least 
represented  as  sitting  on  that  terrace  and  throwing 
oranges  to  the  swans  in  the  Thames.  And  since  the 
Thames  is  perhaps  three-quarters  of  a  mile  distant 
from  the  Star  and  Garter,  we  must  consider  the  lady 
to  have  been  as  muscular  as  she  was  dangerous  and 
dashing.  Alas!  yesterday  I  was  at  Richmond.  It 
took  me  about  as  long  to  get  there  as  to  get  to  Brighton, 
and  there  was  the  Star  and  Garter  closed.  Enormous, 
abhorrent,  and  dismal,  it  was  like  a  stucco  castle  of 
vast  dimensions  from  which  no  hero  would  ever  again 
rescue  a  heroine. 

It  was  very  sad,  the  moon  shone  down,  the  river 
was  misty  in  the  distance.  I  should  like  to  have  sat 
upon  the  terrace  amid  the  buzzing  of  voices,  the 
popping  of  champagne  corks.  I  should  like  even  to 
have  seen  the  guardsmen  with  the  Macassar  oil 
dripping  from  their  enormous  mustaches — I  should 

305 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

have  liked  even  to  throw  oranges  to  the  swans  in  the 
river,  though  I  did  not  know  what  the  swans  would 
have  done  with  them.  But  alas!  all  these  things  are 
ghosts,  and  the  world  of  Ouida  is  vanished  as  far 
away  as  the  lost  islands  of  Atlantis. 

If  nowadays  we  want  to  dine  rustically,  we  run 
thirty  miles  out  of  town,  though  it  does  not  happen 
very  often  that  we  have  an  evening  disengaged,  so 
that  we  move  about,  not  very  hurried,  but  quite 
hurried  enough  in  all  conscience,  from  one  electri- 
cally lit  place  to  another.  We  get  through  three  or 
four  things  at  night;  we  manage  a  dinner,  a  theatre, 
an  after-theatre  supper,  and  possibly  the  fag-end  of 
a  dance  after  that — and  we  turn  up  to  breakfast 
at  nine  next  morning,  just  as  serenely  as  our  fathers 
did.  I  fancy  that  we  even  turn  up  more  fresh  at 
the  breakfast-table,  for  we  are  a  great  deal  more 
abstemious  in  the  matter  of  alcoholic  liquors.  What 
the  preacher  entirely  failed  in,  the  all-tyrannous 
doctor  has  triumphantly  achieved.  The  other  day 
a  lady,  talking  about  the  book  of  a  woman  novelist, 
remarked  to  me: 

"I  do  not  know  how  Miss gets  to  know  things. 

How  does  she  know  so  exactly  the  feeling  of  craving 
for  drink  that  she  describes  ?  I  have  never  seen  a 
drunken  man  in  my  life." 

This  last  sentence  seemed  to  me  incredible,  but 
when  I  come  to  think  of  it,  I  have  not  myself  seen 
a  drunken  man  for  a  very  long  time.  Indeed,  I  think 

306 


AND   AGAIN   CHANGES 

that  the  last  intoxicated  individual  that  I  have  seen 
was  in  a  political  club  of  the  shade  that  most  strongly 
advocates  restrictions  upon  public  -  houses.  But  I 
may  digress  for  a  moment  to  report  a  couple  of  sen- 
tences that  I  heard  at  an  exhibition  the  other  night. 
They  seemed  to  me  to  be  so  singular  that  I  have  felt 
inclined  to  build  up  a  whole  novel  upon  them.  A 
woman  was  sitting  by  herself  behind  the  band-stand, 
in  an  atmosphere  of  shade  and  aloofness,  and  a  man 
came  up  to  her  and  said,  "Your  husband  is  very 
drunk  now.  We  can  go  off."  But,  upon  the  whole, 
the  doctor  triumphs.  You  hardly  ever  see  a  drunken 
man  in  the  western  streets  of  London;  you  practically 
never  see  a  drunken  woman.  And  the  bars  of  music 
halls,  which  not  so  very  many  years  ago  were  places 
for  alcoholic  orgies,  are  now  almost  deserted,  except 
in  the  interval  when  the  band  plays  a  selection.  In 
the  case  of  music  halls,  this  is  partly  due  perhaps  to 
the  fact  that  nowadays  you  can  take  a  woman  to  them; 
you  can  even  take  a  clergyman  to  them.  And  the 
other  day  I  saw  a  Roman  Catholic  priest  watching 
Russian  dancers.  And  of  course,  if  you  take  a  woman, 
a  clergyman,  or  a  priest  to  a  music  hall,  you  do  not 
desert  your  seat  to  sit  in  the  bar.  But  for  the  better 
class  music  halls  it  is  none  the  less  mainly  the  doctor 
who  has  done  the  damage.  The  Church  has  told  us 
for  a  century  or  so  that  drunkenness  was  a  sin,  and 
we  went  on  sinning.  Our  wives  and  mothers  have 
told  us  for  many  years  that  to  be  drunk  was  to  make 

3°7 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

a  beast  of  one's  self,  and  we  went  on  getting  by  so  much 
farther  from  the  angels.  But  the  doctor  has  gone 
abroad  in  the  land  and  pronounced  sternly  that  alco- 
hol is  bad  for  the  liver,  and  now  we  drink  barley 
water  at  our  clubs.  And  what  the  doctor  has  done 
for  the  audiences  of  the  dearer  music  halls,  the  cheaper 
music  halls  have  done  for  their  own  audiences.  You 
will  see  about  eleven  o'clock  an  immense  crowd  stream- 
ing along  the  pavements  from  any  suburban  Palace 
or  Empire — all  these  people  will  be  quite  sober. 
Twenty-five  years  ago  more  than  half  of  them  would 
have  been  spending  their  time  and  much  more  money 
in  the  public-houses.  And  this  is  a  very  pleasant 
thought,  which  gives  me  satisfaction  every  time  it 
comes  into  my  head,  for  I  like  to  see  people  happy 
in  this  land  where  happiness  is  counted  as  sin — I 
like  to  see  people  happy  and  yet  not  demonstrably 
damaging  their  pockets,  their  healths,  or  their  morals. 
So  that  what  with  one  thing  and  another — what  with 
the  ease  of  getting  about  and  the  multiplicity  of  means 
of  communication — we  see  a  great  deal  more  of  the 
ways  of  the  world.  We  may  be  becoming  more 
shallow,  but  we  are  certainly  less  hypocritical.  We 
may  possibly  be  becoming  more  timid,  but  we  cer- 
tainly grow  much  more  polite.  London  is  lighter  and 
London  is  more  airy.  It  is  so,  demonstrably  at  any 
rate,  in  its  wealthier  regions  and  in  its  main  thorough- 
fares. I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  you  will  not  find 
what  you  might  call  pockets  of  late  Victorian  gloom 

308 


AND   AGAIN   CHANGES 

and  squalor  in  the  north  and  in  the  northwest  of 
London.  There  is  no  knowing  what  you  will  not  find 
in  London,  and  certainly  there  are  survivals  of  horrors 
as  there  are  survivals  of  the  picturesque.  One  lives 
on  one's  own  little  modern  ring,  one  has  fairly  good 
times,  one  has  the  perpetual  arousing  and  distracting 
of  one's  interest.  But  two  years  ago  7  was  coming 
back  on  Saturday  night  from  a  small  town  of  a  manu- 
facturing type,  not  very  far  outside  the  London  radius. 
The  little  town  in  itself  was  one  of  the  ugliest  places 
that  it  was  possible  to  imagine.  There  was  not  a 
building  in  it  of  any  approach  to  dignity.  In  every 
one  of  the  windows  of  the  squalid  cottages  that  made 
it  up  there  was  a  pair  of  Nottingham  curtains;  the 
inhabitants  were  utterly  uncivil  if  you  asked  them 
the  way,  and  they  appeared  to  be  all  operative  manu- 
facturers, drawing  small  wages  from  a  slowly  decaying  > 
trade.  It  was  as  ugly,  as  dirty,  as  dusty,  and  as  mod-  )  , 
ern  a  town  as  you  could  find  even  in  the  Eastern  States  | 
of  America.  The  railway  station  was  badly  illu- 
minated, and  in  the  dim  shadows  of  the  platform  great 
crowds  of  the  Saturday  night  inhabitants  were  wait- 
ing for  the  last  train  to  the  next  small  town  on  the  line. 
It  was  a  most  disagreeable  scene.  Underfed  and 
stunted  men  sang  the  coarsest  popular  songs  of  the 
year  before  last  of  London;  underfed  and  stunted 
boys  shouted  obscene  remarks  in  hoarse  voices.  The 
elder  women  were  all  dressed  in  badly  fitting  garments, 
imitating,  I  should  imagine,  the  clothes  that  Queen 

3°9 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

Victoria  wore.  The  young  girls,  on  the  other  hand, 
as  long  as  you  could  not  perceive  them  closely  in 
the  gloom,  wore  a  most  distinguished  summer  finery, 
but  all  their  things  were  put  on  very  badly;  the 
frilled  hats  raked  over  on  one  side;  the  shoulders 
were  one  higher  than  the  other.  Petticoats  showed 
beneath  the  bottoms  of  skirts;  the  flesh  of  faces  was 
unhealthy  and  lacking  in  complexion;  the  teeth  were 
mostly  very  bad,  and  the  voices  usually  harsh,  cackling, 
and  disagreeable,  the  words  being  uttered  with  that 
peculiar  intonation  which  has  spread  from  West 
Essex  all  over  the  country,  and  which  is  called  the 
cockney  dialect.  It  was,  in  short,  a  sort  of  American 
effect.  One  might  have  been  on  a  Saturday  evening 
at  the  steam-car  depot  of  the  cotton  manufacturing 
town  called  Falls  River,  N.  J. 

And  this  crowd  of  unpresentable  people,  uttering 
disagreeable  sounds,  packed  itself  into  an  ill-lit  train; 
and  we  rumbled  through  an  ugly  night,  emitting 
from  each  compartment  trails  of  nasty  sounds.  We 
screeched  popular  songs,  called  out  foul  epithets, 
occasionally  we  punched  each  other's  heads;  we 
swayed  from  side  to  side  of  the  compartments,  in  solid, 
struggling  masses.  And  this  type  of  life  seemed  to 
continue  all  the  way  from  the  heart  of  Bedfordshire 
to  about  the  middle  of  the  northwest  of  London. 
Changing  at  the  terminus,  we  took  an  entirely  un- 
familiar London  local  line  whose  termination  was,  I 
think,  Hammersmith.  And  there,  as  it  were,  in  a  long 

310 


AND    AGAIN    CHANGES 

trail  from  the  northwest  to  the  extreme  west  of  Lon- 
don, was  the  same  atmosphere  of  gloom,  of  yellow 
light,  of  disagreeable  humanity,  and  really  hateful 
sounds.  So  that,  in  our  clean,  white,  spick-and-span 
London,  with  its  orderly  and  well-behaved  pleasant 
crowds,  there  remains  this — corners  into  which,  as 
it  were,  the  housemaid's  broom  has  swept  the  dust 
and  detritus  of  a  dead  age.  It  was  like,  that  journey, 
going  back  a  quarter  of  a  century.  We  were  Vic- 
torians once  again,  Victorians  in  our  ugliness,  in  our 
coarseness,  in  our  objectionable  employment  of  the 
Saturday  night,  in  our  drunkenness,  and  in  our  sham 
respectability.  For  among  the  crowd  at  the  London 
terminus  I  perceived  a  gentleman — a  workingman  of 
the  most  awe-inspiring  respectability,  who  occasion- 
ally cleans  my  windows  and  reproves  my  frivolity 
with  quotations  from  Ruskin,  as  if  I  were  a  worm 
and  he  a  Calv^nistic  Savonarola.  This  gentleman  the 
day  before  had  come  to  me  with  a  piteous  tale.  He 
had  founded  a  lecture  hall  in  Lambeth,  where  he  was 
accustomed  to  read  extracts  from  William  Morris's 
socialistic  pamphlets,  from  the  works  of  Henry 
George,  Joseph  McCabe,  Upton  Sinclair,  Ruskin  and 
Carlyle,  Mr.  Galsworthy,  Mr.  Wells,  Mr.  J.  K. 
Jerome,  and  other  social  reformers.  He  had  founded 
this  lecture  hall,  where,  every  Sunday  morning,  he  was 
accustomed  to  act  the  part  of  preacher.  On  the 
Friday  night  he  had  come  to  me  with  the  lamentable 
story  that  the  landlord  had  seized  the  furniture,  had 

3" 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

seized  his  library,  and  had  closed  the  hall.  My  func- 
tion was  to  head  his  subscription  list,  and  I  suppose 
I  headed  it.  I  had  always  been  taught  to  consider 

Mr.  the  most  respectable  of  men,   though   he 

cleans  my  windows  shockingly  badly.  But  then  the 
poor  fellow  had  been  out  of  work  for  nearly  eleven 
years,  employers  disliking  his  free  thinking  and 
radical  outspokenness. 

And  then  on  that  Saturday  night  I  perceived  Mr. 
upon  the  platform  of  the  terminus.  He  had  a  pea- 
cock's feather  in  his  billycock  hat,  he  was  dancing  to 
the  tune  of  "God  Save  the  People!"  in  a  ring  that  the 
railway  police  vainly  endeavored  to  move  on — and 
there  was  not  a  trace  of  priggishness  about  his  face. 
He  was  in  his  shirt-sleeves  and  snapping  his  fingers 
over  his  head.  I  doubt  for  the  moment  if  he  could 
have  quoted  Ruskin,  but  he  shouted,  "  Down  with  the 
landlords!"  just  before  the  police  reached  him  and 
hustled  him  off  into  a  cloak-room. 

Filled  with  curiosity,  I  went  next  morning  to  his 
lecture  hall.  It  was  open,  and  Mr.  -  -  himself  was 
arranging  pamphlets  for  sale  upon  the  trestles.  He 
was  very  forbidding,  in  a  decent  suit  of  black  broad- 
cloth with  a  turn-down  collar,  a  prominent  Adam's 
apple  and  a  red  satin  tie. 

He  said  that  the  landlord  had  consented  to  let 
him  open  the  hall  again,  though  he  still  wanted  thirty- 
two  shillings  for  the  rent  and  had  taken  Mr.  -  — 's 
typewriter  in  pawn  until  that  sum  should  be  paid. 

312 


AND    AGAIN   CHANGES 

Mr.  -  —  once  more  quoted  Carlyle  and  Henry  George. 
He  proved  that  landlords  were  unmitigated  villains 
and  that  I — it  was  in  his  tone  of  haughty  seriousness 
and  earnest  moral  effort — that  I  was  a  frivolous  puppy. 
Upon  investigation  I  discovered  that  I  had  paid  the 
whole  quarter's  rent  of  the  hall.  Mr.  had  mis- 
represented the  figure  to  me,  a  fact  which  he  had 
forgotten  upon  the  Sunday  morning.  Other  friends 
had  found  still  more  money,  which  I  presume  had 
assisted  to  put  Mr.  —  -  in  spirits  on  the  night  before. 
I  did  not  mention  these  things  to  Mr.  -  — ,  who  con- 
tinued to  overwhelm  me  with  moral  sneers  as  to  the 
uselessness  of  my  life.  He,  a  poor  workingman,  had 
worked  his  way  so  high,  whereas  I,  with  all  the  ad- 
vantages of  education  and  what  he  was  pleased  to 
declare  was  lavish  wealth,  had  achieved  no  more  than 
a  few  frivolous  books.  And  mind  you,  so  fully  did 
Mr. believe  in  himself  that  I  retired  apologeti- 
cally as  his  audience  began  to  file  in.  I  was  filled  with 
a  sense  of  my  own  unworthiness. 

I  should  say  that  Mr.  -  -  is  just  another  Victorian 
survival;  I  remember  so  many  of  these  figures  in  my 
extreme  youth.  There  was  W.,  a  socialist  cabinet- 
maker, with  flashing  eyes,  who  founded  a  free-labor 
association  for  the  supply  of  blacklegs  to  firms  whose 
employees  had  gone  on  strike.  W.,  I  remember, 
frightened  me  out  of  my  young  life,  he  was  so  vocifer- 
ous, and  his  eyes  flashed  so.  He  was  generally  in 
my  grandfather's  kitchen  eating  excellent  meals,  and 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

persuading  my  grandfather  that  he  was  wanted  by  the 
police  for  political  reasons — a  romantic  lie  which  very 
much  appealed  to  Madox  Brown's  simplicity.  Then 
there  was  also  a  Mr.  B.,  a  usually  intoxicated  paper- 
hanger;  he  had,  I  think,  no  political  aspirations,  but 
he  was  largely  supported  by  my  family,  because  of 
his  flow  of  Shakespearian  quotations.  These  never 
stopped,  and  they  were  as  romantic  in  those  days  as 
it  was  to  be  in  hiding  for  political  reasons.  They 
never  stopped.  I  remember  once  when  Mr.  B.  was 
standing  on  the  top  of  a  ladder,  putting  up  a  picture- 
rail  and  more  than  reasonably  intoxicated,  the  ladder 
gave  way  beneath  him.  He  grasped  the  picture-rail 
by  one  hand,  and  hanging  there  recited  the  whole  of 
the  balcony  scene  from  "  Romeo  and  Juliet,"  waving 
his  other  arm  toward  the  ceiling  and  feeling  for  the  top 
of  the  ladder  with  his  stockinged  feet,  his  slippers 
having  fallen  off.  He  was  a  nasty,  dirty  little  man, 
but  he  too  impressed  me  with  the  sense  of  my  un- 
worthiness.  So  they  all  did.  I  remember  at  the  time 
of  the  great  dock  strike  being  taken  to  dinner  by  a 
Manchester  labor  leader  who  was  anxious  to  improve 
my  morals.  There  were  present  Prince  Krapotkin, 
Mr.  Ben  Tillett,  Mr.  Tom  Mann,  and  I  think  Mr.  John 
Burns.  The  dinner  took  place  at  the  Holborn  res- 
taurant, and  the  waiters  were  frightened  out  of  their 
lives  amid  the  marble,  the  gilding,  and  the  strains 
of  the  band.  For  such  a  group  in  those  days  was 
considered  a  wildly  dangerous  gathering.  Prince 


AND    AGAIN    CHANGES 

Krapotkin  might  have  a  bomb  in  the  tail  pockets  of 
his  black  frock-coat,  and  as  for  Messrs.  Tillett,  Burns, 
and  Mann,  there  was  no  knowing  whether  they  would 
not  slay  all  the  customers  in  the  restaurant  with  single 
blows  of  their  enormous  fists. 

"We  must  destroy!  We  must  destroy!"  Mr.  Mann 
exclaimed. 

"On  the  contrary,"  Prince  Krapotkin  replied  in 
low  tones,  "we  must  take  example  of  the  rabbit  and 
found  communistic  settlements." 

So  they  thundered,  and  the  waiters  trembled  more 
and  more,  and  there  were  a  great  many  emotions 
going;  as  for  me,  I  felt  the  same  emotion  of  unworthi- 
ness.  In  those  days  I  had  written  a  fairy  tale  which 
had  met  with  an  enormous,  and  I  suppose  deserved, 
success,  and  I  remember  that  as  we  walked  away 
from  under  the  shelter  of  the  restaurant  in  torrential 
rains  Prince  Krapotkin  told  me  that  it  was  a  very 
bad,  a  very  immoral  book.  It  dealt  entirely  with  the 
fortunes  of  kings,  princes,  the  young,  the  idle,  or  the 
merely  beautiful.  And  I  was  so  overwhelmed  with 
the  same  sense  of  unworthiness  that,  as  I  was  about 
to  sink  into  the  wet  pavements,  it  occurred  to  me  that 
I  might  find  salvation  by  writing  a  fairy  tale  all  of 
whose  heroes  and  heroines  should  be  labor  leaders. 
I  did  indeed  write  it — that  was  exactly  twenty  years 
ago — and  from  that  day  to  this  I  have  never  been 
able  to  find  a  publisher  for  it. 

But  do  not  let  me  be  misunderstood.  I  am  not  by 
21  315 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

any  means  attempting  to  condemn  Mr. of  the 

lecture  hall.  He  got  money  out  of  me  so  that  he 
might  elevate  his  brother  workmen,  and  so  that  he 
might  get  drunk  on  the  Saturday  night.  But  I  am 
convinced  that  in  the  atmosphere  in  which  he  lived 
the  one  thing  would  have  been  impossible  without 
the  other.  I  fancy  that  no  man  can  be  a  really  moving 
preacher  without  committing  sustaining  sins.  I  am 
quite  certain  that  the  trainloads  of  people  from  these 
gloomy  midland  towns  contained  hundreds  of  excel- 
lent and  respectable  persons,  all  recruiting  themselves 
by  the  orgies  of  the  Saturday  night  for  the  cramped 
formalities  of  Calv^nistic  worship  on  the  Sunday 
morning.  They  could  not  bear  the  monotony  of  their 
lives  without  occasionally  letting  hell  loose,  and  that 
is  really  all  that  there  is  to  it.  But  there  is  this  much 
more:  The  other  day  I  went  out  to  post  a  letter  about 
12.30  A.M.  Upon  the  pavement  lay  a  man  bathed  in 
blood;  his  pockets  had  been  rifled,  his  watch  was 
gone,  his  tie-pin  was  no  longer  there.  I  understand 
that  since  that  date,  some  seven  months  ago,  he  has 
never  recovered  his  reason,  so  effectually  had  he  been 
sandbagged.  And  this  happened  at  a  little  past 
twelve  at  night,  in  one  of  the  broadest,  most  well-lit, 
and  most  populous  highways  of  London,  the  man 
being  not  forty  yards  from  the  entrance  to  the  tube 
station,  and  not  twenty-five  from  a  coffee-stall.  It 
had  been  done  so  quickly  and  so  silently.  As  Froissart 
says  in  his  chronicles:  "They  slew  him  so  peaceably, 

316 


AND   AGAIN   CHANGES 

that  he  uttered  no  word."  And  the  police  never  dis- 
covered a  sign  of  the  man's  assailants.  The  point  is 
that  behind  my  house  for  a  distance  of  nearly  two  miles 
there  stretches  toward  Wormwood  Scrubbs  Prison  a 
long,  dreary  neighborhood  containing  all  the  criminals 
and  outcasts  of  London.  This,  of  course,  is  a  sombre 
comment  on  the  brightness  and  gayness  of  which  I 
have  spoken  before.  It  means,  of  course,  that  the 
breaking  up  of  the  slums  in  western  London  has 
driven  these  unfortunate  populations  in  a  body  into 
this  now  dangerous  quarter,  just  as  similar  move- 
ments, commercial  or  economical,  drive  other  classes 
of  the  conventionally  undesirable  population  into  other 
considerable  portions  of  the  western  regions  of  London. 


XV 

WHERE   WE    STAND 

UPON  reconsidering  these  pages  I  find  that  I  have 
written  a  jeremiad.  Yet  nothing  could  have 
been  further  from  my  thoughts  when  I  sat  down  to 
this  book.  I  said  to  myself:  I  am  going  to  try  to  com- 
pare the  world  as  it  appears  to  me  to-day  with  the 
world  as  it  appeared  to  me,  and  as  I  have  gathered 
that  it  was,  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago.  And  the 
general  impression  in  my  mind  was  that  I  should 
make  our  life  of  to-day  appear  to  be  a  constant  suc- 
cession of  little,  not  very  enduring  pleasures;  a  thing, 
as  it  were,  of  lights,  bubbles,  and  little  joys — a  gnat- 
dance  into  the  final  shadows.  I  want  nothing  better, 
and  assuredly  nothing  better  shall  I  get.  I  want 
nothing  better  than  to  be  in  Piccadilly  five  minutes 
after  the  clock  has  struck  eleven  at  night.  I  shall  be 
jammed  to  the  shoulders  in  an  immense  mass  of 
pleased  mankind,  all  pouring  out  of  the  theatres  and 
the  music  halls.  We  shall  move  slowly  along  the 
pavement  between  Leicester  Square  and  the  Circus. 
In  that  section  it  will  be  a  little  dark,  but  before  us, 
with  the  shadowed  houses  making  as  it  were  a  deep 


WHERE    WE    STAND 


black  canon,  there  will  be  immense  light.  Perhaps 
it  will  be  raining  only  slightly.  All  the  better,  for  from 
the  purple  glow  before  us  light  will  be  reflected  on  a 
thousand  or  half  a  million  little  points.  The  innu- 
merable falling  drops  will  gleam,  born  suddenly  out  of 
the  black  heavens.  The  wet  sides  of  the  house  walls 
will  gleam;  the  puddles  in  the  roadway  will  throw 
up  gleaming  jets  as  carriage  after  carriage  passes  by, 
their  sides,  too,  gleaming.  The  harness  of  the  horses 
will  gleam,  the  wet  wind-shields  of  the  innumerable 
automobiles  with  the  innumerable  little  drops  of  rain 
caught  upon  them  will  gleam  like  the  fairy  cobwebs, 
the  cloths  of  Mary,  beset  with  drops  of  bright  dew. 

I  will  have  upon  my  arm  some  one  that  I  like  very 
much;  so  will  all  the  others  there.  In  that  short 
passage  of  darkness  there  will  be  innumerable  sounds 
of  happiness,  innumerable  laughs,  the  cries  of  paper- 
boys, the  voices  of  policemen  regulating  the  massed 
traffic;  the  voices  of  coachmen  calling  to  their  horses. 
And  then  we  shall  come  out  into  the  great  light  of 
Piccadilly. 

No,  I  ask  nothing  better  of  life.  Then,  indeed, 
among  innumerable  happy  people  I  shall  know  that 
we  are  all  going  to  heaven,  and  that  Turgeniev  will 
be  of  the  company. 

Such  indeed  was  my  frame  of  mind  when  I  sat  down 
to  this  book,  and  so  it  remains.  But  yet,  my  jeremiad! 
I  have  personally  nothing  to  grumble  at;  I  dislike  no 
one  in  this  wide  world.  If  anybody  ever  did  me  an 

3*9 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

injury  it  was  so  slight  a  one  that  I  have  forgotten  all 
about  it.  Yet,  in  this  frame  of  mind  of  a  perfect 
optimism — for  my  fellow-creatures  are  all  too  inter- 
esting to  be  disliked  when  once  one  can  get  the  hang 
of  them,  and  if  some  poor  devil  desires  to  steal  my 
watch,  forge  a  check  upon  my  bank,  or  by  telling  lies 
about  me  get  for  himself  a  "job"  or  an  appointment 
or  an  honor  that  might  well  be  mine,  surely  that  man's 
need  is  greater  than  my  own,  since  he  will  commit  an 
act  of  wrong  to  satisfy  it — yet  in  this  frame  of  mind  of 
a  perfect  optimism  I  seem  to  have  written  a  jeremiad. 
I  have  praised  the  seventies,  the  eighties,  and  the 
nineties;  I  have  cast  mud  at  our  teens.  I  remain 
unrepentant.  I  take  nothing  back;  what  I  have 
written  is  the  exact  truth.  And  yet  .  .  . 

To-day  we  have  a  comparative  cleanliness,  a  com- 
parative light;  we  have  as  it  were  reduced  everything 
in  scale,  so  that  no  longer  are  we  little  men  forced  to 
run  up  and  down  between  the  mighty  legs  of  intoler- 
able moralists  like  Ruskin  or  Carlyle  or  Tolstoy,  to 
find  ourselves  dishonorable  graves.  We  are  the 
democracy,  the  stuff  to  fill  graveyards,  and  our  day 
has  dawned.  For  brick  we  have  terra-cotta,  for  evil- 
smelling  petroleum  lamps  we  have  bright  and  fume- 
less  light;  for  the  old  Underground  that  smelled  and 
was  full  of  sulphur  vapors  we  have  bright,  clean,  and 
white  tubes.  And  these  things  are  there  for  the  poor- 
est of  us.  And  yet — a  jeremiad ! 

Is  this  only  because  one  sees  past  times  always  in 

320 


THOMAS      CARLYLE 


WHERE    WE    STAND 


the  glamour  of  romance  which  will  gild  for  us  even 
a  begrimed  and  overcrowded  third-class  smoking 
carriage  of  the  Underground  ?  No,  I  do  not  think 
that  it  is  only  because  of  this.  I  would  give  a  great 
deal  to  have  some  of  the  things,  some  of  the  people, 
some  of  the  atmosphere  of  those  days — to  have  them 
now.  But  nothing  in  the  world  would  make  me  go 
back  to  those  days  if  I  must  sacrifice  what  now  I  have. 
We  are  civilized;  we  are  kindly;  we  have  an  immense 
deference  for  one  another's  feelings;  we  never  tread 
upon  each  other's  corns;  we  never  shout  our  political 
opinions  in  public  conveyances;  we  never  say  a  word 
about  religion,  because  we  are  afraid  of  hurting  some 
one  else's  feelings.  We  are  civilized — used  to  living  in 
a  city;  we  are  polite,  fitted  to  live  in  a  TrdXis;  we  are 
polished  by  the  constant  rubbing  up  against  each 
other — all  we  millions  and  millions  who  stream  back- 
ward and  forward  all  the  day  and  half  the  night. 
We  could  not  live  if  we  had  rough  edges;  we  could 
not  ever  get  so  much  as  into  a  motor-'bus  if  we  tried 
to  push  in  out  of  our  turn.  We  are  Demos. 

And  how  much  this  is  for  a  rather  timid  man  who 
would  never  get  into  any  'bus  if  it  were  a  matter  of 
pushing — how  much  this  is  I  realized  some  years  ago 
when  I  spent  some  time  in  the  close  society  of  a  num- 
ber of  very  learned  Germans.  It  was  terrible  to  me. 
I  felt  like  a  white  lamb — the  most  helpless  of  creatures, 
among  a  set  of  ferocious  pirates.  It  was  not  so  much 
that  I  could  never  remember  any  of  their  bristling 

321 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

titles;  that  did  not  matter.  It  would  have  mattered 
if  I  could  ever  have  got  a  word  into  a  conversation, 
but  I  never  could.  My  voice  was  too  low;  I  was  used 
to  the  undertones  of  our  London  conversations,  where 
we  all  speak  in  whispers  for  fear  of  being  overheard 
and  thus  hurting  somebody's  feelings. 

But  these  German  savants  were  simply  pirates. 
They  were  men  who  had  issued  savagely  forth  into 
unknown  regions  and  had  "cut  out"  terrific  pieces 
of  information.  There  did  not  appear  to  be  one  of 
them  who  did  not  know  more  than  I  did  about  my 
own  subjects.  They  could  put  me  right  about  the 
English  language,  the  Pre-Raphaelite  movement,  the 
British  constitution,  the  reign  of  Henry  VIII.,  or  the 
Elizabethan  dramatists.  They  knew  everything,  but 
it  was  as  if  they  had  acquired,  as  if  they  held,  their 
knowledge  ferociously.  I  did  not  know  that  there 
were  left  in  the  world  men  so  fierce. 

Take  German  philologists.  These  are  formidable 
people.  To  set  out  upon  the  history  of  a  word  is  an 
adventurous  and  romantic  thing.  You  find  it  in 
London  or  in  Gottingen  to-day.  You  chase  it  back 
to  the  days  of  Chaucer,  when  knights  rode  abroad  in 
the  land.  You  cross  the  Channel  with  it  to  the  court 
of  Charlemagne  at  Aix.  You  go  back  to  Rome  and 
find  it  in  the  mouth  of  Seneca.  Socrates  utters  it  in 
your  hearing,  then  it  passes  back  into  prehistoric 
times,  landing  you  at  last  in  a  dim  early  age  among 
unchronicled  peoples,  somewhere  in  the  Pamirs,  on 

322 


WHERE   WE    STAND 


the  roof  of  the  world,  at  the  birth  of  humanity.  Yes, 
a  romantic  occupation — but,  in  a  sense,  piratical. 
For  why  otherwise  should  a  comfortable  and  agreeable 
gentleman  over  a  large  pot  of  beer  become  simply 
epileptic  when  one  suggests  that  the  word  "sooth" 
may  have  some  connection  with  the  French  sus,  the 
perfect  participle  of  savoir,  which  comes  from  the 
Latin  sclre  ?  Personally  I  care  little  about  the  matter. 
It  is  interesting  in  a  mild  way,  but  that  is  all.  But 
my  friend  became  enraged.  He  became  more  enraged 
than  I  have  ever  seen  in  the  case  of  a  learned  gentle- 
man. You  see,  some  rival  Captain  Kidd  or  some 
rival  Francis  Drake  had  enunciated  the  theory  as  to 
the  word  "sooth"  which  I  had  invented  on  the  spur 
of  the  moment.  Individualism  in  fact  flourishes  in 
Germany  still  in  a  way  that  died  out  of  England  when 
Ruskin  died  and  Carlyle  died.  And  being  badgered, 
in  my  civilized  timidity,  by  these  formidable  and 
learned  persons,  I  feel  very  much  as  I  used  to  feel 
when  as  a  boy  I  was  browbeaten  by  the  formidable 
great  figures  that  flourished  when  Victoria  was  Queen. 
Perhaps  it  is  only  in  England  that  we  have  lost  interest 
in  great  subjects,  or  perhaps  it  is  that  we  know  better 
how  to  live,  since  it  takes  all  sorts  to  make  a  world. 
In  an  English  drawing-room  I  should  never  think  of 
abusing  a  Protestant,  a  Nonconformist,  a  Jew,  or  a 
Liberal.  I  should  never  think  of  airing  my  own 
opinions.  There  might — probably  there  would — be 
representatives  of  all  shades  in  the  room.  In  a  mild 

323 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

way  I  should  call  myself  a  sentimental  Tory  and  a 
Roman  Catholic.  Now  in  a  German  drawing-room 
I  have  never  been  for  more  than  ten  minutes  without 
hearing  the  most  violent  abuse  of  Roman  Catholics,  of 
Jews,  of  Protestants,  of  Liberals,  or  of  Reactionaries, 
according  to  the  tastes  or  ideas  of  my  hosts.  This 
makes  society  more  entertaining,  more  colored,  but 
much  more  tiring.  Good  Friday  before  last  I  gave 
a  lunch  to  four  men  at  my  London  club.  I  passed 
the  meat  as  a  matter  of  habit,  of  good  manners,  of 
what  you  will.  What  was  my  astonishment  to  dis- 
cover that  each  of  my  guests  passed  the  meat.  In 
short,  each  of  us  five  was  actually  a  Roman  Catholic 
of  a  greater  or  less  degree  of  earnestness.  Yet,  al- 
though we  were  all  five  fairly  intimate,  meeting  fre- 
quently and  talking  of  most  of  the  things  that  men 
talk  about,  we  were  not  any  one  of  us  aware  of  the 
other's  religious  belief.  This,  I  think,  would  be 
impossible  anywhere  but  in  London,  and  it  is  just 
for  that  reason  that  London  of  to-day  is  such  a  rest- 
ful place  to  live  in. 

But  no  doubt  it  is  just  for  that  reason  that  this 
book  of  mine  has  turned  out  to  be  a  jeremiad.  We 
don't  care.  We  don't  care  enough  about  anything 
to  risk  hurting  each  other's  feelings.  As  a  man  I  find 
this  delightful,  and  it  is  the  only  position  that,  in  a 
democracy,  mankind  can  take  up  if  it  is  to  live.  For 
the  arts,  the  sciences,  thought,  and  all  the  deeper  things 
of  this  life  are  matters  very  agitating.  We  are  a  prac- 

324- 


WHERE    WE    STAND 


tical  people,  but  it  is  impossible  to  be  practical  in  the 
things  both  of  heaven  and  of  earth.  There  is  no 
way  to  do  it.  We  are  materially  practical  when  we 
arrange  our  literature  upon  the  scale  of  the  thousand 
words.  But  we  cannot  then  be  practical  when  it 
comes  to  the  machinery  of  the  books  we  produce. 
We  cannot  pay  any  attention  to  that  matter  at  all. 
A  book  has  outlines,  has  ribs,  has  architecture,  has 
proportion.  These  things  are  called,  in  French,  tech- 
nique. It  is  significant  that  in  English  there  is  no 
word  for  this.  It  is  significant  than  in  England  a 
person  talking  about  the  technique  of  a  book  is 
laughed  to  scorn.  The  English  theory  is  that  a  writer 
is  a  writer  by  the  grace  of  God.  He  must  have  a  pen, 
some  ink,  a  piece  of  paper,  and  a  table.  Then  he  must 
put  some  vine-leaves  in  his  hair  and  write.  When  he 
has  written  75,000  words  he  has  a  book. 

Yes,  we  are  an  extraordinary  nation.  It  seems 
rather  wonderful  to  me  that,  practical  as  we  are, 
we  cannot  see  that  since  every  book  has  its  machinery 
the  best  book  will  be  produced  by  a  man  who  has 
paid  some  attention  to  the  machinery  of  books.  But 
no;  we  roar  with  laughter  at  the  very  mention  of  the 
word  technique.  The  idea  of  Flaubert  spending  hours, 
days,  or  even  weeks  in  finding  the  right  word  is  suf- 
ficient to  send  us  happy  to  bed,  in  a  frame  of  mind 
beatifically  lulled  by  superior  knowledge.  We  know 
that  a  book  consists  of  75,000  words.  It  does  not 
surely  matter  what  those  words  are  as  long  as  in  our 

325 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

mind  we  have  had  a  great  moral  purpose  and  in  our 
hair  those  vine-leaves.  A  practical  people! 

So,  with  our  75,000  words  under  our  arm,  we  set 
forth  in  search  of  fame.  And  this  we  know  we  can 
only  achieve  if  our  book  will  forward  some  social 
purpose.  For  it  is  necessary  for  us  to  prove  that  we 
are  earnest  men.  To  be  a  good  writer  is  nothing. 
No,  it  is  worse  than  nothing,  for  it  generally  leads— 
in  nine  cases  out  of  ten  it  leads — to  the  divorce  courts. 
So  that  we  must  espouse  some  "cause"  in  our  books. 
It  does  not  much  matter  what  it  is.  Personally  I  am 
an  ardent,  I  am  an  enraged,  suffragette.  So  far  I 
have  not  found  that  this  fact  has  led  to  my  books 
selling  one  copy  more.  But  I  hope  that  when  Miss 
Pankhurst  is  Prime  Minister  of  England  she  will 
nominate  me  to  some  humble  post — say  that  of  keeper 
of  her  official  wardrobe.  I  shall  be  a  gentleman  by 
prescription,  and  my  immense  earnestness  will  be 
recognized  at  last,  and  publicly. 

"For  the  thing  to  do"-— I  am  taking  the  liberty 
now  of  addressing  a  supposititious  and  earnest  young 
writer — "  the  thing  to  do  if  you  would  succeed  is  to 
identify  yourself  prominently  with  some  'cause*  or 
with  some  faith.  I  myself  have  had  in  literature  a  suc- 
cess which  I  am  quite  certain  I  do  not  deserve.  My 
books  cannot  by  any  measure  of  means  be  called  pop- 
ular, and  they  are  of  all  shapes  and  sizes.  There  will 
be  thirty-seven  of  them  by  the  time  this  reaches  your 
young  hands.  In  the  first  place,  because  I  have  a 

326 


WHERE    WE    STAND 


German  name,  I  am  usually  taken  for  a  Jew,  and 
this  has  secured  for  me  a  solid  body  of  Jewish  support. 
In  the  second  place,  a  great  number  of  Roman  Cath- 
olics know  that  I  am  a  Roman  Catholic — though  a 
very  poor  one — and  they  support  me  too.  I  also  get 
some  support  from  socialists  who  think  me  a  socialist, 
and  some — but  not  as  much  as  I  deserve — from 
suffragettes.  All  the  support  I  get  comes  from  these 
accidental  labels.  The  quality  of  my  writing  is 
nothing.  So  that,  oh,  young  writer,  I  implore  you 
very  earnestly  to  take  some  label.  Become  the  cham- 
pion of  the  Church  of  England;  write  a  novel  all  of 
whose  characters  are  curates,  in  which  there  is  no  love 
interest,  and  all  the  villains  must  be  Nonconformist 
grocers  who  refuse  to  give  credit  to  the  curates,  so  that 
they  all  die  of  starvation.  Something  like  that." 

But  I  am  afraid  I  am  letting  something  of  the  bitter 
scorn  that  I  feel  peep  through.  That  would  be  a  pity. 
The  fact  is,  all  the  tendencies  that  I  have  described 
are  inevitable  in  our  time.  No  one  is  to  blame;  it 
can't  be  cured;  it  can't  be  helped.  I  can't  blame 
the  literary  editor  who  turns  his  pages  slowly  into  a 
vehicle  for  catching  advertisements.  There  are  some 
who  do  not,  but  they  will  go,  and  it  is  the  same  story 
all  the  world  over.  The  newspapers  cannot  live 
without  advertisements,  so  that  I  cannot  blame  the 
newspaper  proprietor  who  sacks  the  editor  who  does 
not  bring  him  advertisements.  If  not  to-day,  then 
to-morrow,  there  will  not  be  a  newspaper  left  of  which 

327 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 

any  man  might  not  be  the  editor  if  he  could  guarantee 
from  some  other  firm  in  which  he  is  interested  £30,000 
a  year's  worth  of  advertisements.  It  is  sad,  it  is  tragic, 
but  there  it  is.  Neither  do  I  blame  the  publisher 
who  has  cut  me  down  to  my  one  set  of  proofs  that 
must  be  marked  here  with  red  ink,  here  with  blue. 
He  must  do  it.  At  his  throat,  too,  is  the  knife  that  is 
at  all  our  throats. 

Life  is  so  good,  life  may  be  so  pleasant;  must  I  not 
taste  of  it,  and  my  publisher,  and  my  newspaper 
proprietor,  and  my  literary  editor,  and  my  advertise- 
ment canvasser  ?  All  of  us  ?  Yes,  assuredly,  we  are 
all  of  us  going  to  the  Alhambra,  and  the  Prime  Minis- 
ter will  be  of  the  company. 

Life  is  good  nowadays;  but  art  is  very  bitter.  That 
is  why,  though  the  light  whirls  and  blazes  still  over 
Piccadilly,  this  book  has  become  a  jeremiad.  For 
upon  the  one  side  I  love  life.  On  the  other  hand, 
Hokusai  in  the  later  years  of  his  life  was  accustomed 
to  subscribe  himself  "The  Old  Man  Mad  About  Paint- 
ing." So  I  may  humbly  write  myself  down  a  man 
getting  'on  for  forty,  a  little  mad  about  good  letters. 
For  the  world  is  a  good  place,  but  the  letters  that  I 
try  to  stand  up  for  are  about  to  die.  Will  any  take 
their  place  ?  Who  knows  ?  But  as  for  anything  else, 
let  me  put  down  the  words  of  the  Ritter  Olaf,  who  was 
also  about  to  die.  He  had  married  the  king's  daughter 
and  was  to  be  beheaded  for  it  when  he  came  out  of 
church.  But  he  begged  his  life  till  midnight  so  that 

328 


WHERE    WE    STAND 


he  might  dance  amid  the  torches  of  his  bridal  banquet. 
Then  he  went  to  death  saying: 

"Ich  segne  die  Sonne,  ich  segne  den  Mond 
Und  die  Sterne,  die  am  Himmel  schweifen; 
Ich  segne  auch  die  Vogelein 
Die  in  den  Liiften  pfeifen. 

Ich  segne  das  Meer,  ich  segne  das  Land, 
Und  die  Blumen  auf  der  Aue; 
Ich  segne  die  Veilchen,  sie  sind  so  sanft 
Wie  die  Augen  meiner  Fraue. 

Ihr  Veilchenaugen  meiner  Frau, 
Durch  euch  verlier'  ich  mein  Leben! 
Ich  segne  auch  den  Holunderbaum, 
Wo  du  dich  mir  ergeben." 

Brave  words! 


" 


INDEX 


ACADEMY,  ROYAL,  15,  17 
&neid,  180 
Albemarle  Street,  43 
Almayer's  Folly,  251 
Amazing  Marriage,  The,  199 
Amber  Witch,  The,  201 
Arabian  Nights,  277 
Arnoux,  Madame,  204 
Ascot,  270 

Athenaeum  Club,  292 
Athenaeum,  The,  43,  109,  in, 

194,  195,  196,  205,  238 
"Aurea  Catena,"  214 

"  B.  V."  (James  Thomson),  42 

Bach,  J.  S.,  86 

Bacon,  Francis,  268 

Bacon,  Friar,  180 

Barber,  Burton,  214 

Barrie,  J.  M.,  251 

"Battle  of  Prague,  The,"  189 

Bauer,  Carolina,  83 

Beata,  Beatrix,  208 

Beau  Brummel,  247 

Bedford  Park,  38 

Beethoven,  L.  van,  21,  86 

Beeton,  Mrs.,  189 

Berlin,  47,  48 

Bismarck,  Prince,  56 

Bleak  House,  179 

Blessed  Damozel,    The,    59,    60, 

197 

Blind,  Miss  Mathilde,  56,  57 
Bloomsbury,  xix,  39,  71,  72 
Boddington,  Mr.,  153 
Boer  War,   193,  260,  270,  271, 

274 

Bond  Street,  295,  296 
Booksellers'  Row,  143 
Botticelli,  Allessandro,  154 


Boucher,  Arthur,  152 
Bournemouth,  113 
Brown,  Cimabue,  104,  284 
Brown,  D.  G.  R.,  238 
Brown,  Dr.  John,  212 
Brown,  Fora,  212,  213 
Brown,  Ford  Madox,  2,  3,  4,  5, 
8,9,  12,  13,  14,  15,  16,  17,  19, 

28.  3°.  3i.  33-  34,  35-  3^,  55- 
56,   131,   142,   144,   148,   149, 

JS2.  JS3-  !54,  i55-  !56,  iS7. 
158,  159,  163,  164,  177,  213, 

214,    219,  22O,  221,  222,    223, 

224,    225,  226,  227,  228,    229, 

234,    235,  236,  245,  246,    247, 

248,    249,  250,  262,  314 

Brown,  Madox,  exhibition,  228 
Brown,  Oliver  Madox,  42,  49, 

55,  56,  88 
Browning,  Robert,  xiii,  22,  40, 

42,  224 

"Bugle  Calls,  The,"  213 
Bundelcund  Board,  16 
Bungay,  Friar,  180 
Burne-Tones,  Lady,  8,  24,  223 
Burne- Jones,  Sir  E.,  3,  7,  8,  24, 

148,  169,  207,  219,  221,  222, 

230,  253,  264 
Burns,  John,  314,  315 

CAINE,  HALL,  37 

Campanini,  83 

Carlyle,   xiii,   xv,   xvi,   21,   45, 

46,  49,  55,  72,  82,  181,  182, 

311,  313,  320,  324 
Charles  X.,  203 
Charlotte  Street,  161 
Chaucer,  Geoffrey,  276 
Chelsea,  38,  49,  54 
Cheyne  Walk,  29,  30 


22 


331 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 


City  of  Dreadful  Night,  The,  40, 

2  53 

Clod,  Edward,  29 
Coffin,  Sir  Isaac,  213 
Collinson,  238 
Conrad,  Joseph,  251,  265 
Constable,  John,  28,  228 
Cornelius,  247 
Corpt,  J.  B.  C.,  229 
Craigie,  Mrs.,  251 
Crane,  Stephen,  58 
Crane,  Walter,  133 
Crimean  War,  213 
Crockett,  S.  R.,  251 
Crosland,  T.  W.  H.,  254 
Cross,  John,  27 
"Crucifixion,"  Hilton's,  27 
Cruikshank,  George,  176 
Crystal  Palace,  247 
Cuchullain  Saga,  266,  276,  278 

Daily  Chronicle,  43,  271 

Daily  Graphic,  17 

Daily  News,  271 

Daily  Telegraph,  43 

Daisy  Miller,  277 

D'Annuncio,  Signer,  59 

Dante,  161,  183,  276 

Darwin,  Charles,  241 

Davis,  28 

De  Boigne,  Madame,  166 

Debussy,  Claude,  97 

Delaine,  T.  T.,  191,  192 

Demon  Barber,  253 

De  Morgan,  William,  28 

Dick  Harkaway,  253 

Dickens,  Charles,    10,   92,    154, 

177,  179.  237,  241 
Dickinson,  Messrs,  213 
Dicksee,  Frank,  225 
Dinar  ah,  83,  84 
Dolly  Dialogues,  200,  252,  277 
Don  Quixote,  119 
Dreams,  252 
Drury  Lane,  21 
Du    Camp,    Maxime,  165,  166, 

202 

Dudley  Gallery,  1 53 
Du  Maurier,  George,   104,   164, 

284 
Dumas,  Alexandre,  165 


ELIOT,  GEORGE,  72,  73 
Elizabeth,  Queen,  62,  323 
Endsleigh  Gardens,  114 
English  Review,  29 
"  Eustace  Conyers,"  178 
Euston  Road,  41 

FABIAN  SOCIETY,  140,  141 
Fathers  and  Children,  206,  277, 

278 

Faustus,  Dr.,  180 
Field,  The,  271 
Figaro,  119 
Fitzroy  Square,  x,  i,  14,  28,  39, 

45,  56 
Flaubert,    Gustave,    165,    183, 

191,  201,  202,  203,  204,  205, 

206,  207,  208,  210,  264,  325 
Fletcher,  John,  268 
Fletcher,  Mr.   Clara,   109,    112, 

IJ3 

Fletcher,  Mrs.  Clara,    109,   117 
Frankfurter  Zeitung,  47 
Franz,  Robert,  86,  107 
Fraser's  Magazine,  176 
Frederick  the  Great,  212 

GAINSBOROUGH,  THOMAS,  228 
"  Gallery  of  Pigeons,  A,"  53 
Galsworthy,  John,  311 
Gambart,  Mr.,  213,  243 
Garnett,  Edward,    75,    76,    77, 
169,  194,  195,  201,  202,  250 
Garnett,  Mrs.,  208 
Gautier,  Th.,  165,  206 
George,  Henry,  311,  313 
Germany,  Emperor  of,  xvi,  xvii 
"Giornale  Times,"  93 
Gladstone,  W.  E.,  200,  251 
Glenquorch,  Sir  John,  196,  205 
"Goblin  Market,     60,  6 1 
Goethe,  xvi,  45,  £7,  276 
Goodge  Street,  135 
Gosse,  Edmund,  42 
Gottingen,  48 
Gower  Street,  39,  41,  282 
Grafton  Gallery,  14,  228 
Grahame,  Cunningham,  119 
Grant,  238,  241 
Greenwich  Observatory,  136 


332 


INDEX 


HAKE,  GORDON,  42 
Hammersmith,  293,  310 
Hannay,  James,  175,  177,  178 
Hardy,  Thomas,  199 
Harte,  Bret,  40 
Hazlitt,  William,  175 
Heine,  H.,  209 
Heinemann,  William,  200 
Henley,  W.  E.,   193,  194,  197, 

215,  216,  217,  218,  229,  252, 

260,  264,  265,  267 
Hennessy,   120,   121,    122,   128, 

129 

Henry  VIII.,  322 
Hogarth,  William,  154,  229 
Holbein,  Hans,  154 
Holborn  Restaurant,  314 
Homer,  183,  209 
Hood,  Thomas,  175 
Hope,  Anthony,  200,  251 
House  of  the  Gentlefolk,  206 
Howell,    Charles    Augustus,    7, 

^o.  J51 

Hudson,  W.,  208 

Hueffer,  Dr.  Francis,  10,  n, 
48,  49 

Hueffer,  Mrs.  Francis,  57 

Hughes,  Arthur,  5,  226 

Hugo,  Victor,  86,  165 

Hunt,  Holman,  xiii,  xiv,  22, 
23,  24,  144,  145,  146,  154, 
160,  163,  164,  169,  214,  230, 
232,  233,  234,  235,  236,  237, 
238,  241,  242,  243,  244,  245, 
264 

Huxley,  T.  H.,  241 

Hythe,  113 

Idler,  The,  254 

Idylls  of  the  King,  181 

Ivanhoe,  277 


SAMES,  HENRY,  265 
erome,  J.  K.,  311 
errold,  Douglas,  175,  178 
oachim,  102,  103 
John  Inglesant,  200 
Johnson,  Samuel,  175 
Jump  to  Glory  Jane,  199 
Junius,  195 


KELMSCOTT  HOUSE,  133 
Kelmscott     House     Socialistic 

League,  223 

Kensington  Gardens,  279,  300 
King  Lear,  277 
Kipling,  Rudyard,  251,  253 
Krapotkin,  Pince,  314,  315 

LAMBETH,  311 
Langham  Hotel,  134 
Last  of  England,  The,  2 
"  Lauter  Klatsch,"  94 
"Lear's  Nonsense  Verses,"  49 
L' 'Education  Sentimentale ,  202, 

203,  210 

Leicester  Square,  318 
Leighton,  Sir  Frederick,  225 
Lessing,  G.  E.,  87 
Leys,  Baron,  247 
Life  of  Frederick  the  Great,  181, 

182 
"  Light  of  the  World,  The,"  214, 

237 

Lind,  Jenny,  82,  83 
Linnell,  28 

Liszt,  Franz,  45,  80,  8r,  82 
Lord  Ormont  and  His  Aminta, 

199 

Lorna  Doone,  199,  200 
Lost  Shepherd,  7 
Louis  Philippe,  203 
Lucca,  Pauline,  205 

MACCOLL,  Mr.  N.,  194,  195,  196 
Macdonald,  Miss  (Lady  Burne- 

Jones),  24 
Macleod,  Fiona,  41 
Maclise,  Daniel,  176 
Madame  B ovary,   183,  202 
Mademoiselle  lice,  251 
Madox,  Tristram,  177,  178 
Maison  Tellier,  La,  277 
Malibran,  82,  83 
Malvern,  82,  96 

Man  Who  Would  Be  King,  253 
Manchester  frescoes,  227 
Manchester  Guardian,  271 
Manet,  229 
Mann,  Tom,  315 
Mapleson,  Colonel,  83 
Marises,  229 


333 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 


Marochetti,  Baron,  23 
Marshall,  P.  P.,  3,  7,  220 
Marston,  Philip,  41,  42 
Marzials,  Theo.,  42,  53,  54 
Maupassant,  Guy  de,  191,   206, 

276 

Maurice,  Professor,  23 
Mazzini,  Joseph,  56,  162,  248 
McCabe,  Joseph,  311 
Meinhold,  201 
Menestrel,  Le,  47 
Meredith,  George,  28,  29,  30,  31, 

143,  199,  230 
Merimee,  Prosper,  165 
"Messiah,  The,"  96,  97 
Mickleham,  Lady,  200 
Millais,  J.  E.,  10,  23,  24,   144, 

146,  214,  233,  234,  238,  240, 
241,  264 

Millar,  Peter,  26,  27 

Miller,  Joaquin,  39,  40 

Montgomery,  Robert,  198 

Moonlight  Sonata,  Si 

Moreau,  Frederic,  204 

Morning  Post,  271 

Morris  &  Co.,  3,  7,  31,  207,  219, 

222,  224 
Morris,  William,  3,  4,  10,  18,  19, 

24,   116,   133,   134,   143.   !45. 

147,  148,  153,  164,  169,  219, 

22O,  221,  222,  223,  224,  225, 
226,  230,  246,  247,  250,  254, 
255,  264,  265,  311 

Mozart,  21,  86 

Munroe,  23 

Music  and  Moonlight,  112 

"My     True     Love     Hath     My 

Heart,"  53 
Mystcres  de  Paris,  201,  228 

NAPOLEON  III.,  161,  203 
Napoleon,  xvi,  xvii,   170,   197, 

203,  212 

National  Gallery,  157,  293 
National  Observer,  193 
National  Review,  252 
New  Quarterly  Revieiv,  48 
New  Review,  193 
Newcome,  Colonel,  2,  13,  16,  19, 

207 
Newcomes,  The,  2 


News  front  Nowhere,  133,  266 
Nicholas  Nickleby,  277 
Nigger  of  the  Narcissus,  252 
Notes  upon  Sheep  Folds,  181 

O'CONNELL,  DANIEL,  163 
Olaf,  Ritter,  328 
Oliver  Twist,  119,  179 
Only  a  Subaltern,  253 
Open  Boat,  The,  58 
O'Shaughnessy,  Arthur,  42,  43, 

106,  112 
Ossian,  266 
Ouida,  305,  306 
Outlook,  The,  254 
Overbeck,  247 

Pair  of  Blue  Eyes,  199 

Pall  Mall  Magazine,  216 

Pankhurst,  Miss,  326 

Parker,  Peter,  177 

Paxton,  247 

Pepper,  45 

Pepys'  Diary,  80 

Peter  Pan,  46 

Piatti,  102 

Piccadilly  Circus,  318 

Portland,  Duke  of,  247 

Portland  Place,  19,  130 

"  Pretty  Baa-Lambs,  The,"  229, 

?34 

Prince  Consort,  18 
Punch,  104 
Punch,  164 

QUILTER,  HARRY,  131,  154,  155, 
156,  199 

RAE,  GEORGE,  26 

Ralston,  206 

Ramsgate,  177,  189 

Rathbone,  Harold,  160 

Red  Badge  of  Courage,  The,  58 

Red  Lion  Square,  4 

"  Return  Home,  The,"  213 

Riach,  Angus,  175 

Richmond,  303,  305 

Richter,  Jean  Paul,  87 

Robinson,  Miss  Mary,  115 

"  Romeo  and  Juliet,  '314 

Romney  Marsh,  144 


334 


INDEX 


Rossetti,  Arthur,  114,  115,  116, 

I3° 

Rossetti,  Christina,  39,  42,  58, 
60,  61,  62,  63,  64,  66,  68,  69, 
71,73,74,75,76, 144,202,230 

Rossetti,  D.  G.,  3,  5,  6,  18,  22, 

23-  29,  3°.  31-  32,  33-  39.  42, 
45,  49,  58,  59,  60,  70,  71,  106, 
143,  144,  147,  148,  149,  150, 
151,  152,  161,  163,  197,  198, 

199,  201,  2O6,  2O7,  214,  219, 
22O,  221,  222,  234,  235,  244, 
245,  246,  264 

Rossetti,  Lucy,  112,  116,  230 
Rossetti,  Mrs.  William,  57 
Rossetti,  Olive,  114,  115,  130 
Rossetti,  W.  M.,  7,  21,  22,  23, 

24,  29,  146,  161,  201,  247,  248 
Rousseau,  Jean  Jacques,  73 
Rowley,  Charles,  158 
Rudall,  Mr.,  78 
Ruskin,  John,  xiii,  xiv,  6,   n, 

12,  22,  23,  24,  61,  62,  63,  65, 

181,  199,  230,  311,  312,  320, 

323 

Saga  of  Grettir  the  Strong,  266 

Sainte  Beuve,  193 

Salutation  of  Beatrice,  The,  208 

Saturday,  Review,  271 

Saviour  in  the  Temple,  169,  170 

Scalchi,  83 

Scape  Goat,  The,  200,  201 

Schiller,  F.,  xvi,  45,  87 

Schreiner,  Olive,  251,  252 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  147,  148 

Sesame  and  Lilies,  63,  181 

Seymour,  Jane,  80 

Shaen,  Mr.,  162 

Shakespeare,  William,  183,  209, 

268,  275,  276 
Sharp,  William,  41 
Shaw,  Bernard,  134,  141,  142 
Shelley,  P.  B.,  248 
Shields,    Frederick,     157,    158, 

159,  160 

Ships  that  Pass  in  the  Night,  200 
Siddall,  Miss,  22,  28 
Sidonia  the  Sorceress,  201 
Sinclair,  Upton,  311 
Sir  Hugh  the  Heron,  147 


Smith,  Albert,  252,  287 
"Songs  of  the  Sierras,"  39 
"  Songtide,"  41 
Spectator,  43,  271 
Spencer,  Herbert,  292 
Standard,  190 
Sterne,  Laurence,  158 
Stevens,  F.  G.,  195 
Stevens,  G.  W.,  193 
Stevenson,  R.  A.  M.,  193,  228, 

229,  230 
Stevenson,    Robert    Louis,    59, 

123,  126,  216,  218,  229 
Stone,  Frank,  238 
Stones  of  Venice,  6 
Story  of  an  African  Farm,  200 
Strand,  295,  296 
Strauss,  97,  102 
Sue,  Eugene,  201 
Sweeney  Toad,  253 
Swinburne,  A.  C.,  6,  7,  29,  42, 

44,   106,   147,   148,   170,  181, 

199,  230,  264 

TENNYSON,  ALFRED    Lord,  40, 

no,  112,  181 

Thackeray,  W.  M.,  i,  188 
Thackeray,  Miss,  300 
Thatched  House  Club,  78 
Thomson,  James  ("V.  B."),  40, 

253 
Three  Choirs  Festival,  95,  96, 

97 

Three  Men  in  a  Boat,  252 
Tillett,  Ben,  314 
Times,  n,  43,  46,  78,  107,  131, 

191,  192,  271,  285 
Titian,  154 

To-Day,  251,  252,  254 
Tolstoy,  Leo,  xiv,  320 
Tonge,  28 

Torch,  The,  130,  135,  141 
Tottenham   Court    Road,    136, 

*37 

Trafalgar  Square,  139,  293 
"Trenches    Before    Sevastopol, 

In,"  213 

Trial  of  Joan  of  Arc,  The,  277 
Tribuna,  The,  47 
"Triumph    of    the    Innocents, 

The,"  160 


335 


MEMORIES    AND    IMPRESSIONS 


"Troopship  Sails,  The,"  213 
Turgeniev,  205,  206,  207,  208, 

209,  265 

Turner,  J.  M.  W.,  28,  228 
Twain,  Mark,  40 
"Twickenham  Ferry,"  53 

Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,  118 
Un  CcEur  Simple,  211 
Universal  Review,  131,  199 

VICTORIA,  Queen,  xvi,  xvii,  10, 

63,  in,  310,  311 
Virgil,  276 

WAGNER,  RICHARD,  86,  92,  98, 

99,  100,  107 
Wallace,  William,  148 
Watson,  William,  170 
Watts-Dunton,    Theodore,    42, 

195,  198,  222 
Webb,  Philip,  220 


Wells,  H.  G.,  251,  311 
Westminster  Abbey,  80,  153 
Westminster  Gazette,   200,    252, 

271 

Wheels  of  Chance,  252 
Whistler,  J.  McN.,  28,  33 
Wilde,  Oscar,  4,  164,  166,  167, 

168,  169,  170,  207 
WiUielm  Meister,  46 
Windsor  Castle,  286 
Windus,  28 
Woburn  Square,  39 
Woolner,  Thomas,  23 
Worcester,  96 
Work,  2,  169 

Working  Man's  College,  23 
Wormwood  Scrubbs  Prison,  317 
"  Wounded,"  213 

YEATS,  W.  B.,  41 

ZANGWILL,  ISRAEL,  170,  251 
Zola,  Emil,  206 


THE     END 


DATE  DUE 


JUH1    "66 

KECD  MAy  2     1966 

JUN  2  3 

•89 

UCIRECg 

'UL     2  196 

9 

ttTO 

n  ucv  o  *  1  wi  •» 

r';RJi'73 

RECD  FEB  2  8  1973 

GAYLORD 

PRINTED  IN  U    S    A 

UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


A     000  672  960     2 


I, 


